ABSTRACT
The study of landownership and property rights was very much to the fore in the early years of the ‘new’ rural studies that began to emerge in sociology, geography and planning departments in the late 1970s, and Richard Munton was one of those who helped to galvanise and carry forward this interest. He was not alone in championing studies of landownership, with the study of rural landownership issues in Suffolk by Newby and colleagues still a seminal work for students in this area, and a small but significant number of other researchers entering this territory (Newby et al. 1978; Marsden 1984, 1986; Whatmore 1986).
