Shrubsole’s analysis shows how land that has been taken over generations, by conquest, by forced enclosure, by repression, continues to be protected by complicit (or cowed) governments, and that, despite the public perception that the gentry has fallen into decay and handed it all over to the National Trust, many of them are doing very nicely. SaveCundyStreetAndWaldenHouse August 2, 2019 The Duke of Westminster, the richest man under 30 in the world, wants to demolish the Cundy Street Flats and Walden House to build a new luxury development. 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: 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”. 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.
Shrubsole estimates that 30% of all England’s land is still owned by the aristocracy and gentry.
Significant land holdings were giving to those who had helped him achieve power and their heirs. He begins with the historical context and the Domesday Book, in which William the Conqueror compiled an inventory of the country he had conquered. He and data journalist Anna Powell-Smith have detailed their research on the Who Owns England? blog and he expands on the subject in this book. Getting an answer proved difficult which made him all the more determined to pursue the subject. In Who Owns England?, Guy Shrubsole describes how his campaigning interests – from environmental damage on agricultural land to housing shortages in London – led him to wonder who owns the land in England.
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