5.1 Introduction

The common field system, as discussed in the previous chapter, governed the access that people had to the use of the land both for agricultural production and for a wide range of countryside products. Rights to land were shared in a variety of ways amongst different people. The idea of ‘ownership’, as we would understand it now, in the sense of near-complete control over a particular plot of land, was something that emerged over time. Full control over all aspects of land use could only be secured through the accumulation of the individual rights attached to particular parcels of land. Such control was gradually gained over very extensive areas by the private owners of the Great Estates, reaching a peak late in the nineteenth century. Land provided such owners with a variety of benefits: monetary, aesthetic, recreational and social. The Great Estates then represent another version of multifunctionality in the management of an area of land to deliver a variety of commodities and non-marketed outputs, but in this case the non-financial benefits were internalised through the ownership of a single individual or family; a single residual claimant.