ABSTRACT
The highest recorded losses are in the South East, Midlands and North West reflecting, one can surmise, greater pressure and land-use demands from urban and industrial activities and the particular impact of metropolitan London on estate heartlands within its environs. The abstract trait of ownership may conceivably change without physical alteration of estate character and the sub-division of amenity land need only imply change of management control. Even though landed estates were and are fundamentally rural, the very term country house implying a location away from large settlements, over the past century the encroachment of urban growth into the countryside has resulted in complete and partial loss of a number of former estate heartlands. A number of estate heartlands are now sites of industrial activity; two lend their names to industrial parks, the complete antithesis of their former landscape.
