Landed estates and cottage provision in rural England: The Manvers Estate, Nottinghamshire in the 19 ^th and early 20 ^th century

Abstract

This paper investigates changing housing provision in rural Nottinghamshire during the 19 ^th and early 20th centuries using archival material and historical census data. The Manvers estate archives contain valuable information to reconstruct the role of landed estates, land agents and tenant farmers in shaping housing provision and conditions. The role of structural circumstances, such as the agricultural crisis, the poor law regime and the open-closed settlement model, discourses around cottage sanitary conditions and the development of governmental regulations are considered. It is shown that the occupancy of estate cottages was actively monitored by the land agent both in open and closed villages. Sources related to housing quality and sanitary conditions only appear in the early 20 ^th century, even though elite discourses on this issue became important by the late 1700s. However, it is also apparent that the estate invested in maintenance and new developments, mainly from the 1860s.