neW roles for naTure^117‘poorly competitive, slow-growing and crippled plants often living outside
their normal climate range’ occupied extensive areas of ground.^8 Beyond
the suburbs, moreover, there was usually a belt of countryside densely
populated by affluent ‘villas’ – diminutive country houses – with elaborate
pleasure grounds or small parks, but often without other attached land.^9
Satellite villages became increasingly gentrified. Defoe in 1722 described
the numerous houses lately erected in Stratford, Walthamstow, Woodford,
Wansted and West Ham: ‘this increase is, generally speaking, of handsome
large houses being chiefly for the habitation of the richest citizens’.^10
Proximity to urban centres allowed those with commercial, political or
industrial interests to keep a ready eye on business, and made it easier for
them to access shops, public spaces, assemblies and other opportunities
for fashionable consumption and display. The penumbra of suburbs and
mansions, gardens and parks was most marked in the case of London.
Directors of city banks, wealthy merchants, and retired army officers all
moved en masse into the neighbouring counties. Arthur Young commented
in 1804 that ‘Property in Hertfordshire is much divided: the vicinity of the
capital; the goodness of the air and roads; and the beauty of the country’
had led ‘great numbers of wealthy persons to purchase land for villas’.^11
But other major cities had similar hinterlands, in which gardens, parks and
‘lawns’ occupied extensive tracts of ground.
Second, and more importantly, this period saw the growth – out beyond
the fringes of the towns – of large landed estates, a development associated
with the revolutions in agriculture and industry but, like them, with older
roots. Landed estates may, for convenience, be defined as extensive and
continuous areas owned as absolute private property. At their heart lay a
mansion and its grounds, usually accompanied by a ‘home farm’ which was
retained ‘in hand’. Beyond lay farms which were leased to tenants, together
with a scatter of plantations and game covers likewise retained under the
owner’s direct control (Figure 23).^12 Aristocratic properties might extend
over 10,000 acres (c.4,000 hectares) or more; the estates of the local gentry
embraced a parish or two, and ranged from perhaps 1,000 to 10,000 acres
(400–4,000 hectares).^13 Whatever the scale of their possessions, landed
families vaunted their antiquity, and their own ancient roots. But while some
landowners had indeed come over with the Conqueror, rather more could
trace their ancestry to individuals who had successful careers in law or royal
administration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or who had more
recently grown rich through finance, trade or manufacturing.^14 And while
often described as a ‘relic of the feudal age’, in reality the landed estate was
a specifically modern form, for its distinguishing feature was untrammelled
power over extensive tracts of countryside. In the Middle Ages estates had
seldom comprised continuous, unitary blocks, and rights over land had
been complex and diffuse. The customary tenants – villeins and cottars –
owed rents and services to a local lord, but farms passed by inheritance
within peasant families and in many cases customary land could be bought