What changed about English estates (like Downton Abby) that caused them to fail after WWI?

Factual Questions
21

I think you’re getting a couple of things muddled up here. Aristocrats often handed their houses over to the National Trust to avoid being taxed into losing their homes, with the agreement that they could carry on living there as long as the house opened to the public (ie, they effectively became tenants).

However, the examples you gave are all still privately owned homes and open to the public for pure money-making reasons on the part of the owners. Same reason they hire them out for film shoots and weddings.

22

I think** bob++** is referring to the tax relief for national assets scheme. The link goes to HMG’s site explaining what assets can be taken out of tax in exchange for public access. Houses are among those assets.

Here’s an article about why it’s a bit of a scam. The link goes to a Guardian article from four years ago about how those access rights are not very onerous and are used such that the owners of tax exempt items can arrange that access does not unduly inconvenience them. I’m fairly sure the arrangements haven’t changed in the last four years.

23

I seem to remember reading there was a long agricultural depression from about the 1870s onwards: they were starting to feel the pinch even before WW1.

24

Improved shipping and refrigeration technology allowed American agricultural products to be marketed across the Atlantic, and the economies of scale available in the US made British landowners increasingly non-competitive. Taxes completed the job later.

25

Huh. Interesting That’s a longer view interpretation of historical events for the history of Soviet communism than I’ve come across.

26

West Wycombe Park, where some bits of Downton Abby were filmed, was partly funded by Government compensation to slave owners, when slavery was abolished in England. And the compensation was paid because the owners were making money off slavery in the first place.

As mentioned above, many of the country estates were never self-supporting in the first place.

27

I claim no knowledge of this subject whatsoever, but I did look up a few interesting estates. Some people seem to have inherited nothing except the estate itself - often very little apart from the family home. Agonizing, since it basically involves somebody handing you a large tax bill for sentimental reasons. However, those with worthwhile land seem to have transitioned to simply making it pay through modern agricultural techniques, with a little tourism mixed in.

28

By the 1950s, one county house a week was being demolished, as they were money pits which required huge numbers of no-longer-willing domestics to make them function and in most cases no willing buyer could be found for them. A few, like Stowe and Wrest Park, were purchased by schools or institutions. Others like Woburn Abbey or Longleat, reinvented themselves as tourist attractions.

29

Dan Cruickshank’s excellent BBC documentary The Country House Revealed goes into some detail (albeit peripherally) about the slow deaths of some these estates. I got the impression that as many here have already mentioned, a lot of British estates were never entirely self-sufficient to begin with. Some, like the Clandeboye Estate, were always in financially shaky ground, with Lord Dufferin always making plans to add to the buildings but lamenting about not having the finances to do so (a large portion of his income being from government service – he was the Viceroy of India at one point). Others, like the estate surrounding Wentworth Woodhouse, were in better financial positions given the large amount of land owned by the Fitzwilliams and the discovery of coal on the grounds of the estate. But Wentworth Woodhouse eventually was sold because of death taxes and nationalization of the British coal industry. Overall, it seemed like the survival of many of these estates depended on marriage to monied families as much as any income coming from the land itself.

30

Yes - that’s it exactly.

Death duty can cripple these large estates, especially if one heir dies before there is time to make sufficient provision. They are still the legal owners but in return for not being driven out of house and home by HMRC, they open up to the hoi polloi aka, the paying public.

31

A few, like the Gascoyne-Cecil family, managed their estates better and the Hatfield House estate remains intact while admitting tourists to some extent and remaining a house where the family live as well. They diversified into other areas as well, often behind holding companies to conceal their ownership. The house has occasionally been used for location filming, as far back as Cromwell in the 1970s and more recently for the Tomb Raider series.

32

While it is true that the Salisburys have done better than most in holding on to their lands, those estates are not quite as extensive as they were 100 years ago. As early as 1919, the 4th Marquess sold a large chunk of what is now Welwyn Garden City to Ebenezer Howard. Although, as the residents recently discovered, he did remain lord of the manor.

One broad generalisation would be that the large estates that still exist tend to survive because they used to be even larger. While larger estates brought with them correspondingly larger tax bills, this did at least mean that the big once-in-a-generation hit in death duties could be dealt with through the sale of peripheral landholdings or art treasures. It was medium-sized estates that sometimes found it more difficult to raise the cash for death duties without liquidating everything. But those that were able to contract in stages had a better chance of surviving long enough to outlast the several generations of high death duties.

33

The estate was already in trouble when Grantham was young. His marriage to Cora was a financial transaction–the contract that wed her inherited wealth to the estate was a big plot device. Luckily, the couple fell in love.

It was never easy to maintain an estate. Some heirs were wastrels. Others (like Grantham) were just not very bright. Changing times added difficulties, as others have outlined.

34

You dont mention the cost of just basic maintenance and modern upgrades those old buildings required. Imagine the millions it would cost to put a new roof on those buildings. Imagine the cost of adding modern plumbing, electricity, and heating systems. Many of the heirs simply give up.
Something similar happened in the US where many of the expensive mansions that were built in the late 19th and early 20th century were abandoned by their heirs. Simply because they were too expensive to keep up. I guess up in Rhode Island the heirs simply took everything of value out and walked away from the properties.

Consider the Biltmoreestate. Nobody has actually lived there since the 1950’s and now its just a huge museum and B&B.

35

This seems like the main reason–and that leads me to a question:
Why is the tax so high?
Is -and was- there a reason why the government wanted to dismantle the estates and force them into bankruptcy?

The grand estates and the aristocratic class who lived in them have been part of England for centuries.
I assume that almost all the members of the House of Lords owned such estates. Today, of course, the Lords has been reduced to a powerless ceremonial attachment to Parliament. But a century ago, why didn’t they have enough political clout to change the tax laws, and protect their own interests and lifestyles?

36

Part of these changes to tax law was the change in the balance of power between social classes.

Just prior to WW1 you had to be over 25 and male to vote, and this was actually a reform from previous generations where voters also had to own real estate too.

Such things kept electoral power well out of the hands of the lower social orders.

The closest thing we had to representation for working class people was the Liberal party, and it was a series of critical votes and elections prior to WW1 that demolished the power of the House of Lords on its veto over parliamentary made law.

This effectively emasculated the power of the aristocrats - the land owning classes. Further changes such as being salaried as a Member of Parliament also made it possible for representatives of working classes to put themselves up for election.

This was pretty much the culmination of a class struggle where those who produced British wealth had virtually no say in how it was distributed, or in the laws that they were governed by. Throughout the 19thC various repressive measures and hard won liberalisations of law came about partly through philanthropy, perhaps through fear that denial of representation could lead to revolution - in any case workers organised themselves into trades unions, and the need for an increasingly educated skilled population all came together to loosen the ties of power.

The fear of revolution was justified, after all we only need to look at Europe, and Russia in particular to see what can happen once workers start to organise

After WW1 we had the final change to democracy to allow women to vote - and again this then made it possible for political parties to represent workers directly, instead of through a social proxy such as the Liberals.

You have to remember that living conditions for workers were absolutely dreadful, prior to WW1 a full 30% of children did not make it to adulthood, and average lifespans for those in the lower classes were decades shorter than those in the gentrified classes.

WW1 revealed the extent that Britain had truly slipped away in industrial power, it also revealed the disproportionate privilege of the landed classes. Social change such as improvements to housing, education, sewerage and clean water were glaringly necessary - the problem was how it was to be paid for.

That’s when the relatively recent idea of income tax (used to fund WW1 itself) was extended, and in turn along came death duties - when the Labour party looked at where it could leverage money for all this it was also seeking social changes, the idea of huge wealthy estates that were in effect just dead money the view was taken that this should be redistributed and invested.

Personally I see the imposition of death duties and subsequent collapse of estates as being very similar to what Henry VIII did to the church, it was a transfer of wealth from wealthy landowners to government, and in both there was an overt intention to change the social structure of Britain.

37

That was the battle fought over Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget” of 1909. The Liberals just won the General Election before bringing in a bill to restrict the power of the House of Lords to vote down bills, especially Finance Bills, and following precedent, George V agreed in principle to create enough new lords to enable the government to force the bill through the Lords. Of course, the consequent tensions weren’t helped by the government’s need, because of the narrow result, for the support of Irish members and hence to bring back the Home Rule Bill - and all that followed from that in Ireland…

38

On the other point, about political attitudes in general to big estates and estate duty, let’s not forget that the Tories were the dominant party more or less throughout the interwar period, with short intervals. But they recognised the social and political changes thrown up by the war (and to be fair plenty, like Baldwin, felt some sense of duty to the soldiers and their dependants). In those days of pre-Keynesian strict financial orthodoxy, they cut public expenditure as much as they dared - and of course estate duty acted as a “stealth tax”, as far as the majority of the population were concerned.

39

Note that inheritance taxes don’t really explain the poor financial condition that estates fell into.

The tax explains why some estates were no longer owned by the former family, but not why they weren’t merely bought up by new/other wealthy people and continued on as before.

The whole system was unsustainable in and of itself. The farm and other land derived wealth from an estate was no longer sufficient to support the estate. These were becoming major financial drains whether the owner lived or died.

WWI and the economic and social repercussions of that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many of them. The camel didn’t die right away, but it was going to hit the ground eventually depending on the financial reserves of the family, etc.

“Death taxes” is an oversimplification of things.

40

That sounds really interesting. I’ll have to keep an eye out for it. It looks like it’s currently only viewable on the web by people in England. It’s on DVD, but they look to be region 2. Hopefully they show it again.

On one episode, a staff member goes to a house which is in decline. You could see the normal upkeep wasn’t done anymore and the place was falling apart. There must have been constant upkeep needed with the stonework, woodwork, etc. I would guess the rise in salaries of skilled trades really hit these houses hard. If you can get skilled workers for a servant’s wage, then you can afford to keep up with all the maintenance needed. But if their wages go up and you can’t, then I’m sure the problems started to cascade from there.