ABSTRACT
The future of private landownership and the long-term survival of remaining landed estates are complex interrelated issues. The traditional estate is the very product of a land system dominated by private ownership, but the continuity of the association in the twentieth century has been a principal factor in the break-up of property. Changes in ownership structure have brought a decline in the traditional landlord-tenant system. A landed estate is no longer solely a luxury item or unit of consumption but a productive economic unit based on a scarce and diminishing resource. Greater public control over land is needed to prevent speculation and exploitation of its scarcity value. The imposition of capital taxation is dictating the direction of the land market which may in any case be progressing towards greater public and institutional landownership, present policy merely accelerating an inevitable process. The rural landscape with which people are familiar owes much of its creation to the private landowner of past centuries.
