ABSTRACT
Landed estate owners for many centuries had conspicuously embellished the countryside with a landscape that reflected their power and status in English society. A new social, economic and political order was evolving, but its impact on the large landowners and their estate property was not felt until the closing decades of the nineteenth century and not apparent in the landscape until the twentieth. Changes occurring in the rural environment progressively led to a diminution of local power and authority of the landed classes. Legislation also became more favourably disposed towards the tenant farmer, in the recognition of tenant-rights and in the provisions of the Game Laws. The Game Laws, introduced in 1770 to preserve the shooting of game as the exclusive prerogative of the landowner, had long been a bone of contention for estate tenants and a source of political agitation in the early nineteenth century. Rural labourers too gradually became less dependent on the large estates.
