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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2008
One of the legacies of the great landed estates in England is the large number of distinctive estate cottages which are scattered throughout the countryside. These are, of course, more in evidence in some counties than others, particularly in those where a considerable proportion of land was owned by the elite. Estate cottages survive in some numbers from the eighteenth century, but the greatest number was built in the nineteenth. Research on estate buildings has tended to highlight the model village, built largely during the first half of the nineteenth century and created for aesthetic reasons. A well-known example is Somerleyton in Suffolk, designed in the 1840s for the then owner of Somerleyton Hall. Here, the cottages, built in a variety of styles – some with mock timber-framing, others with thatched roofs – surround the village green. Ilam in Staffordshire is another example, where cottages which were designed by G.G. Scott in 1854 display a range of styles and materials, many alien to the local area. A third example is Edensor on the Duke of Devonshire's Derbyshire estate, where the stone buildings exhibit distinctive Italianate features. The list could be extended, but these examples were clearly designed to impress, to provide aesthetic pleasure for the owners and, in the case of Ilam, to create a picturesque image of idyllic contentment among the labouring population as much as to provide good, spacious, sanitary accommodation for employees. In each of these examples, the cottages are generally of individual design and thus expensive to build.
1. Williamson, Tom and Bellamy, Liz, Property and Landscape: A Social History of Land Ownership and the English Countryside (London, 1987), p. 127Google Scholar discusses these areas in some detail.
2. Darley, Gillian, Villages of Vision, London, 1975Google Scholar discusses the model village. See also Havinden, Michael, ‘The Model Village’ in Mingay, G.E. (ed.), The Victorian Countryside, Vol. 2 (London, 1981), 414–27.Google Scholar
3. One important exception is the Norfolk estate of the Earls of Leicester; see Martins, Susanna Wade, A Great Estate at Work: The Holkham Estate and its Inhabitants in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1980).Google Scholar
4. Cobbett, William, Rural Rides (London, 1967 edition).Google Scholar
5. Waistell, C., Designs for Agricultural Buildings (London, 1827), p. 80.Google Scholar
6. See for example, Atkinson, William, Views of Picturesque Cottages with Plans (London, 1808)Google Scholar; Brooks, Samuel H., Designs for Cottage and Villa Architecture (London, 1840)Google Scholar; Dearn, T.H., Sketches in Architecture, Consisting of Original Designs for Cottages and Rural Dwellings (London, 1807)Google Scholar; Loudon, John Claudius, An Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture (London, 1842)Google Scholar, and Robinson, P.F., Designs for Cottages and Villas (London, 1839).Google Scholar
7. The Land: The Report of the Land Enquiry Committee, Vol. 1, Rural (London, 1913).Google Scholar
8. The Duke of Bedford, , A Great Agricultural Estate (London, 1897), p. 95.Google Scholar
9. ibid., p. 81.
10. ibid., Chapter 5.
11. Martins, , A Great Estate, pp. 222–4.Google Scholar
12. Bateman, J., The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1883, reprinted Leicester, 1971).Google Scholar
13. ibid.
14. See Rawding, Charles, ‘The Iconography of Churches: A Case Study of Landownership and Power in Nineteenth-Century Lincolnshire’, Journal of Historical Geography, 16, 2, 1990, 157–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15. Victoria County History of Lincolnshire, II, ed. Wm. Page (London, 1906), 406.Google Scholar
16. Young, A, Agriculture of Lincolnshire (London, 1799), p. 413.Google Scholar
17. Lincolnshire Archive Office, Lincoln (LAO), Yarb. 9/19/2, 8 March 1847.
18. LAO, Yarb. 5/1/90.
19. Stamford Mercury, 12.2.1864, p. 5.Google Scholar
20. LAO, Yarb. 9/19/1–6, letter books 1846–57. The Duke of Bedford's cottages were also managed directly by the estate. The Duke stated his reasons: ‘It would be an easy matter to avoid all difficulties by letting the cottages with the farms; but, in that case, deterioration of the buildings and their inhabitants would ensue, because no one would be concerned to maintain the cottages in good order, and decay of the dwellings is invariably followed by degeneracy in their population.’ A Great Agricultural Estate, p. 85.
21. A similar picture emerges on the Holkham estate during this period. See Martins, , A Great Estate, p. 235.Google Scholar
22. LAO Yarb. 5/2/9/1, accounts.
23. ibid.
24. Martins, , A Great Estate, pp. 221 and 235.Google Scholar
25. The cottages are situated by the road at the entrance to Thorganby Hall, a large farm of over 600 acres. The tenant, William Nainby, subsequently purchased the farm when it was put up for sale by the estate in 1891.
26. This may reflect the attitude of individual earls. The 4th Earl succeeded to the estate in 1880 at the age of 21 and remained in control well into the twentieth century.
27. Today the Yarborough estate comprises some 26,000 acres, about a half of its nineteenth century extent.
