ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to address these omissions, exploring elite women's contribution to a range of rural spaces including country houses, landscape parks, parish churches and estate villages. It examines women's contribution to building and remodelling country houses and to commissioning and directing improvements to gardens and parklands. The chapter explores their role in commissioning building works on the wider estate including churches, almshouses and charity schools. It investigates the idea of charity in relation to the moral economies of propertied women's estates, exploring their involvement in both ad hoc giving and more systematic programmes of assistance. The chapter also explores the idea of stewardship in relation to the political interests of landed estates. It recovers women's activity in a range of spheres and spaces and also asks what was different about propertied women's estate management to that undertaken by their fathers, husbands and sons.
