Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Land and How to Take It Back

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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

Though there's more precision here than ever before, the outline of the story is familiar. But in each section, the foreground is filled in with well-chosen examples of finer-grained detail. The narrative is surprisingly fast moving, a personal journey of discovery interspersing historical and analytical passages with first-person tales of adventure, such as a descent into secret tunnels under central London. An Old Story Retold How the trespass movement is battling for a kinder, more inclusive Britain". New Statesman . Retrieved 30 July 2021. You could see the results of that failed campaign, as Shrubsole convincingly does, as the roots of many of our contemporary difficulties – “the housing crisis is a land crisis”. The laundered cash that has poured into London property, much of which lies empty, has been facilitated by a taxation system that largely ignores the productive and commercial value of land. In the shires, there is a radical shortage of building plots and a critical housing problem, while legacy landowners are subsidised to exploit the estates granted to them when the country’s entire population was equal to that of present-day Greater Manchester. Major owners include the Duke of Buccleuch, the Queen, several large grouse moor estates, and the entrepreneur James Dyson.

The book’s findings are drawn from a combination of public maps, data released through the Freedom of Information Act and other sources. Painstakingly researched ... having come to the end of this illuminating and well-argued book it's hard not to feel that it's time for a revolution in the way we manage this green and pleasant land' Melissa Harrison, New Statesman 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. Who owns Britain? A good question, and it looks like there are people about who would have it that you still don’t know the answer.

Despite the fact I have prior knowledge on the law regarding all things land, this is a very accessible read for those with none. I wasn't sure whether it would be quite dry given the topic and having not read anything from Shrubsole before, but it was fascinating more than anything. The author is a friends of the earth activist/campaigner and writer and certainly seems to know what he's talking about when it comes to this topic. For centuries land ownership has been shrouded in mystery and Mr Shrubsole makes a compelling case for reform and some very intriguing and effective ways as to how to begin the reforms process.I have to wonder, though, whether the Duke of Westminster in making his notorious comment was perhaps being a little coy or even trying to deflect attention away from the source of his great wealth, the Grosvenor Estate, comprising land that is now the ritziest part of London - Mayfair, Belgravia, Grosvenor Square and the rest of it. This book appealed to me because I had read and thoroughly enjoyed The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland. It was probably only a matter of time before someone looked to the rest of Great Britain. Guy Shrubsole’s writing style is less formal than Wightman’s. He writes in what I would term Sunday supplement style, ie chatty and easy to read, not too taxing. Who Owns England? by Guy Shrubsole review – why this land isn't your land". The Guardian. 28 April 2019 . Retrieved 7 April 2021. Both detective story and historical investigation, Shrubsole’s book is a passionately argued polemic which offers radical, innovative but also practical proposals for transforming how the people of England use and protect the land that they depend on – land which should be “a common treasury for all”’ Guardian 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.

Many receive agricultural subsidies which are paid simply for owning land (including environmentally damaging grouse moors), with no obligation to benefit taxpayers or the environment. They can use trusts and offshore ownership arrangements to avoid taxation or scrutiny (sometimes while also receiving subsidies). Properties in high-demand areas such as central London are left empty, treated as ‘investments’, and complicated ownership arrangements mean they may be bought with laundered money. Public bodies including the Forestry Commission, the Ministry of Defence and all local authorities combined own 8.5 percent – only half the size of the 17 percent which remains 'unregistered land'. Shrubsole's educated guess is that most of this is also owned by the aristocracy. The headline revelation is that less than one percent of the population literally owns half the country. A tiny number of old aristocratic families still privately own around a third of it, while those who have joined the super-rich more recently own another seventeen percent. Fifteen million proud owner-occupiers of ordinary houses and flats, whose homes are supposedly their castles, together own only five percent of England. This it seems is probably a comparable area to that held by the micro-élite who actually do own castles. Renters, of course, own none. Shrubsole estimates that 18% of England is owned by corporations, some of them based overseas or in offshore jurisdictions. He has based this calculation on a spreadsheet of land owned by all UK-registered companies that has been released by the Land Registry. From this spreadsheet, he has listed the top 100 landowning companies.Behind this simple question lies this country’s oldest and best-kept secret. This is the history of how England’s elite came to own our land, and an inspiring manifesto for how to open up our countryside once more. A fascinating investigation into land and property ownership in England. It's a wide ranging and surprising account which embraces Government departments, Russian Oligarchs, Sheikhs, grouse hunting estates, entrepreneurs and, of course, the aristocracy. In the unpromising format of an Excel spreadsheet, a compelling picture emerged. Alongside the utilities privatised by Margaret Thatcher and John Major – the water companies, in particular – and the big corporate landowners, were PLCs with multiple shareholders. There were household names, such as Tesco, Tata Steel and the housebuilder Taylor Wimpey, and others more obscure. MRH Minerals, for example, appeared to own 28,000 hectares of land, making it one of the biggest corporate landowners in England and Wales.

Who Owns England? by Guy Shrubsole review – our darkest secret". The Guardian. 10 May 2019 . Retrieved 7 April 2021. Land is a source of wealth, it impacts on house prices, it is a source of food and it can provide enjoyment for millions of people.” Some interesting topics are covered within this book and a comprehensive breakdown of how England is divided up is covered, from the new money plutocrats who have brought vast estates within the English countryside, to the waning public sector - a body who is supposed to exist for the benefit of us, the people, but instead has been ruthlessly privatised and diminished under the guise of Neo-liberalism, since the 1980's and now only owns roughly 8.5% of our nation.

Summary

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. Atlantic Oakwood forests, woodlands variously referred to in Britain as Upland Oakwoods, Atlantic Oakwoods, Western Oakwoods, Temperate Rainforest, Caledonian forest, and colloquially as Celtic Rainforests. [10] His book on the subject was shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society Literary Prize [11] and longlisted for the James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation. [12] An irrefutable and long overdue call for the enfranchisement of the landless’ Marion Shoard, author of This Land is Our Land The pandemic has reminded us that access to land is critical to our mental and physical wellbeing. Children in particular desperately need wild and interesting places in which they can freely roam. A large body of research, endorsed by the government, suggests that our mental health is greatly enhanced by connection to nature. Yet we are forced to skulk around the edges of our nation, unwelcome anywhere but in a few green cages and places we must pay to enter, while vast estates are reserved for single families to enjoy.