ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the nature of their role and to illustrate some of the more common identifying features of the landed estate in the landscape by the late nineteenth century. The economic interests of the majority of landowners, however, were rooted in agriculture at least until the first half of the nineteenth century. Landscapes of enclosure did not visually demarcate large-estate properties from those of small landowners unless it was policy to fence, hedge or ditch farm and field boundaries in a standard and distinctive fashion. Many landowners welcomed the railways especially those for whom they opened up new avenues of industrial and commercial enterprises associated with the exploitation of minerals. Medieval depopulation and the physical obliteration of many hamlets and villages has been attributed to a number of causes, but researchers have assigned a major role to the enclosure of land for sheep pasture.
