Land Reform in the British and Irish Isles since 1800

Shaun Evans is Director of the Institute for the Study of Welsh Estates (ISWE), a research centre based at Bangor University to enhance both academic and public understanding of country houses and landed estates in Wales. This includes a portfolio of projects focusing on the historical impacts and influences of these places, especially in relation to the histories and cultures of Wales, its landscapes, identities and global connections, and a sustained effort to make use of this knowledge to make in the spheres of heritage interpretation, cultural tourism, the rural economy, built environment and visitor experience. His own research focuses on gentry culture and landed estates in Wales, 1500-1900. He is also Chair of the North East Wales Heritage Forum. Tony Mc Carthy is a PhD graduate of the Department of History, Maynooth University. A qualified accountant and former stockbroker, he holds an MBA from University College Dublin, and an MA in history from Maynooth University. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University and a former Writer in Residence at the Princess Grace Library Monaco. He is author of The Shaws of Terenure, a nineteenth-century Dublin merchant family and has contributed to a number of other historical monographs. He is currently working on a book on George Wyndham’s time in Ireland. Annie Tindley is Professor of British and Irish Rural History at Newcastle University and Head of the School of History, Classics & Archaeology. Her work interrogates land issues in the modern period including ownership, management and reform. In 2015 she established and became the first director of the Centre for Scotland's Land Futures, an inter-institutional and interdisciplinary research centre, and is the series editor for Scotland's Land, an interdisciplinary book series published by Edinburgh University Press. She is the author of The Sutherland Estate, 1850-1920 (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), and Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish, 1871-1945 (co-edited with Ewen A. Cameron, Birlinn, 2015).

This book is a useful collection of essays on land reform in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1800. It emphasizes the key differences between the four nations, arguing that there has been ‘an imbalance of intensity between Scotland, Ireland and Wales, where land reform centred on the nature and conditions of tenure, protections and land distribution, and England, where it has been more diffuse, feeding into a multitude of debates, including enclosure, commons, game, housing and conservation’. The book is made up of 14 ‘original case studies’, written by a range of contributors, mainly historians but also including lawyers and estate managers, offering expertise and life experiences outside the traditional domain of academic historians.

• Acknowledgements List of contributors List of Illustrations Introduction - Shaun Evans, Tony McCarthy and Annie Tindley Section I: Tenants, Landowners and Estate Management Chapter One: Culmaily: a model of improvement - Duncan SimpsonChapter Two: ‘An overwhelming tide of disappointments and vexation’ – a case study in estate management on the island of Lewis, 1817-1837 - Finlay MckichanChapter Three: Public Interest or Profit? The management of the Crown owned foreshore, 1866 – 2019 - John MacAskill Section II: Agitation and Agendas of Reform Chapter Four: Dr Gavin B. Clark, land reformer - Ewen A. CameronChapter Five: The rhetoric and politics of land redistribution in southern Ireland, 1919-23: national and local perspectives - Terence DooleyChapter Five: The Liberties of the Land: Preserving the commons in England in the later 19th and early 20th centuries - Ben Cowell Section III: Legislation and its Impacts Chapter Six: The introduction of the ‘Gregory clause’ and Ireland’s Great Famine - Ciarán ReillyChapter Seven: Small Landholdings and Society: the legacy of small landholder legislation in the South West of Scotland, 1911-present day - Micky Gibbard Chapter Eight: The case for separate agricultural legislation for Wales - Gwilym Owen and Nerys Llewelyn JonesChapter Ten: ‘The price of our loyalty?’ Ulster landlords, tenants and the Northern Ireland Land Act of 1925 -Olwen Purdue Section IV: Landowner Responses Chapter Eleven: Landed responses to land reform in Scotland and Ireland, c.1860 to 1923 - Annie Tindley Chapter Twelve: ‘The battle of the Welsh nation against landlordism’: The response of the North Wales Property Defence Association to the Welsh Land Question, c.1886-1896 - Shaun Evans Chapter Thirteen: Under pressure? A south-west Wales estate and its response to agricultural depression, land reform and land crisis - John Davies Chapter Fourteen: From landlord to rentier – The wealth management practices of Irish landlords 1903-1933 - Tony McCarthy