15 OCTOBER 1983, Page 27

Landed

John Martin Robinson

English Country Houses and Landed Estates Heather A. Climenson (Croom Helm £15.95) This sensible book examines the princi- pal estates of 500 English landed families from the late 19th century to the Present day, and the strong visual impact of the organisation of their land and buildings on the rural landscape: country houses, parks and gardens, model villages and tenant farms. The book is divided into two sections, pre- and post-1883; that being the date of the third edition of Bateman's Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland. Bateman gave the acreages of the chief English landowners, which he derived from the 1873 Return of Owners of Land (apart from the Domesday Survey of 1086, the on- ly national inventory of who owns the land in England). Miss Climenson's aim was to discover what had happened to the estates listed by Bateman in the following century, by means of sending questionnaires to the present owners. Not all replied; thus she was reduced to working with a sample of 500 great estates (a third of the total she had first envisaged) where the present incum- bent, or local archivists, would co-operate with her research. It is not absolutely cer- tain how representative these estates are (their names are nowhere given in the book). It is obvious, for instance, they any estate which was on the edge of an expan- ding industrial area in 1883 would have been much less likely to continue in private ownership than one which was situated in attractive and productive country. The fact that the Heaton and Trafford estates in Manchester no longer survive does not tell us much about the general trends of decline or survival of agricultural estates as such, though it does tell us something about the

increasing urbanisation of the English land- scape in the past century.

It goes without saying that the unique political power bestowed on their owners by the possession of land has gone (it had before Bateman); that estates in urban or industrial areas are likely to have been built over; it is also not to be denied that the acreages of many (but by no means all) large private estates have decreased in the century since 1883. But does this mean that the traditional English landed estates are more efficiently managed and farmed today than in 1883, and most country houses bet- ter cared for and more generally accessible. Miss Climenson speaks of 'decline' in her text but it has to be remembered that she was collecting her material during the last Labour government, when there was a serious threat of a 'wealth tax' and many of the landowners whom she consulted were more pessimistic about their future than they might be now under Mrs Thatcher's second administration.

Reading between the lines, a picture emerges of the traditional estate which gives considerable grounds for optimism: 78 per cent of the country houses included in the sample have survived in some form, half of them (including some of those belonging to the National Trust) still being lived in as family homes, and over 50 per cent of the estates themselves also survive, if only in a reduced condition. Considering the scale of urban development in England in the past hundred years, and the state of affairs elsewhere in Europe, this strikes me as an extraordinary achievement. In the 'great- landowner' group of the sample not one case is recorded where the original family retains the estate heartland with less than a thousand acres, and only four per cent in the 'greater gentry' group; they have either sold out entirely or kept their house and a properly functioning estate complete with park, woodlands, home and tenant farms, and model cottages.

The picture that emerges from this study is that despite dire and pessimistic forecasts throughout the 20th century, large-scale private landownership has persisted in England with remarkable tenacity in the face of seemingly impossible odds, and as a result much of architectural and historic in- terest or landscape beauty has survived which otherwise would have been destroyed. Though a large number of coun- try houses were demolished in the early 1950s, these were to an extent delayed war- losses, the result of damage caused by war- time requisitioning. Since 1970 no principal residence on any of Miss Climenson's sam- ple estates has been demolished. Even when houses have been sold, there is now an in- creasing tendency for them to be converted into flats or some other beneficial use, which, among other things, proves the ef- fectiveness of the tightening of listed building control in 1968.

This book deals with the subject of coun- try houses primarily from the point of view of the 'heritage lobby', and the emphasis is therefore on preserving buildings of in- terest, public access, and the recreational or tourism value of estates. It would have been equally interesting to have been told more about the principal functions of country houses and estates, viz: family homes, func- tioning economic units and long-established rural communities. Discussing an agricultural estate solely as a 'heritage ob- ject' is rather like treating a Heinz canning factory, because it is sometimes visited by parties of school children, as primarily an educational aid. It would be fascinating to know more about the economic and social role of the estate in the rural community in the late 20th century; for example, how far has it taken part in the fight against the closure of village schools and country bus services; what has been its role in the modernisation of rural housing; and how far has it compensated for the increasing mechanisation of agriculture by providing alternative employment through small-scale industries — a pottery at Holkam, a wood- turning business at Arundel, re-opened slate workings (and a glass factory) at Holker, garden furniture at Chatsworth, computers at DaIlam Tower? Within its own terms, however, this study is a worth- while treatment of its subject and pro- vides much useful information for anybody interested in the evolution and survival of the English country house and landed estate.

'May I introduce you to Miss Bronte, Miss Brontë, Miss Brontë and, er, Mr Bronte?'