ABSTRACT
Victorian age, with both rents and the number of years’ purchase at their zenith. The cost of a typical 1,000-acre estate had risen since the eighteenth century from about 12,000 to over 30,000, and rose still further in the land boom of the 1860’s and early 1870’s, when 1,000 a year in rent might cost 40,000 to acquire.2 The competition for land was fierce, and many wealthy new men had to make do with more modest estates than previously, or even with country seats with little or no land attached.
