Despite what I used to believe, the landed aristocracy remain remarkably adept at retaining their land and other assets - many have owned the same estates they acquired as part of the Norman landgrab in the 11th century. I was less surprised to discover that many landowners use off shore companies to avoid tax and hide their ownership, and trusts and other ruses to sidestep inheritance rules. The figures show that if the land were distributed evenly across England’s population, each person would have just over half an acre – an area roughly half the size of Parliament Square in central London. From the Norman conquest, when William the Conqueror divided up the country among his barons, to the enclosure of 6.8 million acres of common land between 1604 and 1914 (“a land grab of criminal proportions”), Shrubsole shows how the land has been systematically stolen from ordinary people: “Today most of us are landless.” The aristocracy and landed gentry still own at least 30% of England and probably far more Shrubsole, who works as a campaigner for the environmental charity Friends of the Earth, estimates that “a handful of newly moneyed industrialists, oligarchs and City bankers” own around 17% of England.

There has, as a result, been some serious journalistic legwork in Shrubsole’s endeavour. An environmental campaigner for Friends of the Earth, he has used multiple freedom of information requests and a large network of crowdsourced informants and number crunchers to build up a credible picture of the pattern and detail of who owns what. Even so, he has come up against plenty of virtual Keep Out and No Trespassing signs, and some of his findings necessarily rely on best guesswork. The land monopolist has only to sit and watch his property multiplying in value, without effort or contribution Winston Churchill, 1909 I had been waiting to read this for some time, and in a telling manner, so has most of the general public (there has been a waiting list for reservation of this book from my local library for months!!) He begins with the historical context and the Domesday Book, in which William the Conqueror compiled an inventory of the country he had conquered. Significant land holdings were giving to those who had helped him achieve power and their heirs. This book has been a long time coming. Since 1086, in fact. For centuries, England’s elite have covered up how they got their hands on millions of acres of our land, by constructing walls, burying surveys and more recently, sheltering behind offshore shell companies. But with the dawn of digital mapping and the Freedom of Information Act, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for them to hide.

Summary

There are grasps at disparate bits of theory (Doreen Massey, David Harvey, Adam Smith) but it’s clear that they haven’t really been understood, and the author doesn’t engage with them beyond citing the odd line. Peel Holdings tends not to show its hand in public. Like many companies, it prefers its forays into public political debate to be conducted via intermediary bodies and corporate coalitions. In 2008, it emerged that Peel was a dominant force behind a business grouping that had formed to lobby against Manchester’s proposed congestion charge. The charge was aimed at cutting traffic and reducing the toxic car fumes choking the city. But Peel, as owners of the out-of-town Trafford Centre shopping mall, feared that a congestion charge would be bad for business, discouraging shoppers from driving through central Manchester to reach the mall. Peel’s lobbying paid off: voters rejected the charge in the local referendum and the proposal was dropped.

Shrubsole estimates that 30% of all England’s land is still owned by the aristocracy and gentry. The 6th Duke of Westminster at least had the grace to admit that he hadn’t become Britain’s biggest landowner by the sweat of his brow. When asked what advice he would give to young entrepreneurs, the billionaire said, “Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror”. When he died he passed his entire estate to his then 25-year-old son who is currently the subject of a campaign by activists.Shrubsole argues convincingly that land should be a common good used for the benefit of everyone. This requires a programme of land reform, similar to that which Scotland has pursued in the last 20 years, opening up access to land and introducing community buy-out legislation. There are now half a million acres in community ownership in Scotland, thanks to their land reform movement. An irrefutable and long overdue call for the enfranchisement of the landless’ Marion Shoard, author of This Land is Our Land The book’s findings are drawn from a combination of public maps, data released through the Freedom of Information Act and other sources. Shrubsole estimates that “the aristocracy and gentry still own around 30% of England”. This may even be an underestimate, as the owners of 17% of England and Wales remain undeclared at the Land Registry. The most likely owners of this undeclared land are aristocrats, as many of their estates have remained in their families for centuries. Guy Shrubsole, author of the book in which the figures are revealed, Who Owns England?, argues that the findings show a picture that has not changed for centuries. “Most people remain unaware of quite how much land is owned by so few,” he writes, adding: “A few thousand dukes, baronets and country squires own far more land than all of middle England put together.”

Hundreds attend mass trespass for the right to roam". The Argus (Brighton) . Retrieved 26 July 2021. I have no time for the ‘feudalism still exists’ argument, which one sometimes sees from both XR-types, freemen-on-the-land conspiracists, and the significant overlap between the two. Just because something looks a bit feudal, because a landowner has a title, doesn’t mean that present conditions aren’t deeply capitalist. They need to be understood as such. It’s also ahistorical to claim much of a meaningful link between contemporary land ownership and grants from William the Conqueror. Unfortunately I can’t provide a link to my comment as it was deleted within a few hours of its being posted, despite no obvious infringement of the FT’s moderation guidelines. Although I have no proof, I can only suspect the involvement of the dead hand of Grosvenor Estates’ public relations department who might, perhaps, also keep an eye on Wikipedia. The question posed by the title of this crucial book has, for nearly a thousand years, been one that as a nation we have mostly been too cowed or too polite to ask. There has, as a result, been some serious journalistic legwork in Shrubsole's endeavour. Shrubsole ends his fine inquiry into these issues with a 10-point prospectus as to how this millennium-long problem might be brought up to date, and how our land could be made to work productively and healthily for us all' Observer, Book of the Week The Crown owns large tracts, as you’d expect and pays tax on the income from those lands. However, it uses its two Duchy’s (Cornwall and Lancaster) to ensure that it isn’t paying tax on other vast swathes of land it has spread all around the country. A lot of land is owned by organisations like the National Trust, the Forestry Commission, the Church owns a lot too, but not as much as they used to, plus other big businesses now own substantial amounts. However, most of the elite and aristocracy don’t want people knowing how much land they have nor do they want you to know how much they are able to claim in benefits from it. They have built walls, moved villages and used the enclosure acts to steal the common land for their own use. All to stop us discovering exactly how much they own.What’s astonishing about his research is how little has changed in the last 1,000 years. His figures reveal that the aristocracy and landed gentry – many the descendants of those Norman barons – still own at least 30% of England and probably far more, as 17% is not registered by the Land Registry and is probably inherited land that has never been bought or sold. Half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population. The homeowners’ share adds up to just 5%: “A few thousand dukes, baronets and country squires own far more land than all of Middle England put together.”

Companies own a further 18 percent. A list of the top 100 reveals that the biggest landholdings are those of privatised water companies and grouse moor estate management companies. (As regular readers will know, Shrubsole has a loudly buzzing bee in his bonnet about grouse moors.) Conservation charities including the National Trust own around two percent. An irrefutable and long overdue call for the enfranchisement of the landless' Marion Shoard, author of This Land is Our Land Prominent on the list are the Boughton estate in Northamptonshire, belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch, the Woburn estate, which is owned by the Duke of Bedford, and the Badminton estate in Gloucestershire, owned by the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort. Several large grouse moor estates and Beeswax Dyson Farming, a farm owned by pro-Brexit businessman James Dyson, are also high on the list. Trespassing through tightly-guarded country estates, ecologically ravaged grouse moors and empty Mayfair mansions, writer and activist Guy Shrubsole has used these 21st century tools to uncover a wealth of never-before-seen information about the people who own our land, to create the most comprehensive map of land ownership in England that has ever been made public. It reveals how the “decorative pomp and verbose flummery” with which the great estates are surrounded disguises this theft, and disguises the rentier capitalism they continue to practise. It explains how the landowners’ walls divide the nation, not only physically but also socially and politically. It shows how the law was tilted away from the defence of people and towards the defence of things. It shows how trespass helps to breach the mental walls that keep us apart.

Mike Hannis reviews Guy Shrubsole's 'Who Owns England?'

This is going to be a great book, crucial for anyone who seeks to understand this country' George Monbiot From the Duke who owns the most expensive location on the Monopoly board to the MP who's the biggest landowner in his county, he unearths truths concealed since the Domesday Book about who is really in charge of this country at a time when Brexit is meant to be returning sovereignty to the people.