Agricultural History Review, Volume 55 Part 2 (2007), pp. 289–300

The notion that there was ‘a revolution in landownership’ in the spate of land sales in 1918–21 was based on claims in the trade journal, the Estates Gazette. Beckett and Turner’s article, ‘The end of the old order?’, demonstrates conclusively that that journal did not contain the detailed evidence to support its claims, thus appearing to demolish the ‘revolution’. Consideration of the scale and timing of the growth of ownerfarming, however, coupled with experimental use of data on landownership from Kelly’s Directories, calls for second thoughts. It seems possible that something not far short of ‘a quarter of England’ may actually have changed hands in 1918–21. 

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