Agricultural History Review, Volume 66 Part 1 (2018), p. 157

Briony McDonagh was awarded the Joan Thirsk Memorial Prize for this book. There was stiff competition but McDonagh and her elite women prevailed. Those already acquainted with the activities of these remarkable women will not be surprised, while newcomers will be re-assured that McDonagh is not seduced by luxury, wealth and privilege. She celebrates their achievements and has clearly enjoyed her association with the seventy women cited in the text, but reminds us that their function was to reproduce the social and political power of the ruling elite.

As she says in her concluding chapter, there is no escaping the fact that through their astute estate management, these gifted and determined women bolstered the existing patriarchal order. Improvements, which cemented the property rights of their families, extinguished the rights of commoners and hit lower-class women particularly hard. Even though these elite women were often very religious and also keen philanthropists, some of their activities were potentially disastrous for those further down the social scale.

Nevertheless, McDonagh identifies a real issue. While the contribution made by women in business, the arts and philanthropy during this formative period has been acknowledged, the role of women in shaping the British landscape has largely been ignored, not only by contemporaries, but by modern historians and archivists too. As a historical geographer and feminist, McDonagh sets out to correct this omission and challenge the view, expressed by John Beckett, that ‘eighteenth-century landowning was a man’s world’.

The idea for the book was part of a wider project to uncover alternative histories of the British landscape and to recognize the contribution of those – including women and the poor – so often written out of existing accounts. We might not visualize elite women as victims of discrimination, but we soon learn in terms of their gender, they were seriously disadvantaged and had much to contend with. In relation to their fathers, husbands and sons they were truly underprivileged. McDonagh fully appreciates the dark corners of their lives and skilfully plots their story.

The book is composed of seven tightly written chapters with an appendix providing the key information on the female landowners, estate managers, builders and improvers featured in the text. This is a most useful reference with details of their route to landownership, marital status when managing the property, approximate years managing the estate, the names of husbands and children, and finally their own maiden name. In this way, seventy lively women and their appendages become quite manageable. The estates are located principally in the Midlands, but with significant additions in the West Country, South East and in the North. The lady landowners of East Anglia, including Lady Suffield and Constance, Marchioness of Lothian who presided at Blickling for over a century, are notable exceptions.

After setting the scene, McDonagh explains the full range of legal constraints which operated against heiresses and female landowners. Primogeniture meant that elder daughters were bypassed in favour of younger sons, while coverture ensured that if they were lucky enough to inherit, estates passed to their husband on marriage. Some managed to secure separate status for their estate, but most had to wait for widowhood to assume complete control of their property. No wonder a quarter of aristocratic women never married. Apparently, a woman’s chance of inheriting an estate diminished during this period as nephews were favoured over daughters: this kept the property within the family. Despite these constraints, McDonagh calculates that, from enclosure awards drawn mainly from the Midlands counties, just over ten per cent of 250,000 acres was owned by women. With 700 examples of female landowners scattered through 150 parishes in ten counties, they were relatively commonplace. Significantly, half the land identified was owned by 50 elite women.

In the next two chapters, McDonagh describes how these women managed and improved their estates. Not all of them showed particular aptitude, but several, notably those women brought up with the prospect of inheritance, showed a special affinity and talent for the various tasks involved. One of first examples, Elizabeth Hood, was trained in the art of estate accounting by her elderly father and inherited the family estate at Butleigh Wootton, Somerset aged just eighteen. She married a captain in the Royal Navy, who was killed six years later, leaving her to manage the estate – which she tripled in size – for a total of 67 years: the longest tenure cited in the appendix.

Similarly, childless widows devoted themselves energetically to their new roles. Elizabeth Prowse is the prime example, benefiting from the experience of her mother-in-law and the manufacturing and radical background of her own family. While her brother, Granville Sharp, campaigned for the abolition of the Slave Trade, brother James made agricultural implements at his iron foundry in London and performed trials on her estate at Wicken. Prowse brought an entirely modern approach to the business, keeping an estate journal, reforming her accounts and experimenting with new ideas and technology. Clearly, these two women were exceptional but not unique, as the other 68 examples testify.

In the next two chapters, McDonagh explores the traditional role of elite women and how their contribution has been represented in obituaries, family memorials, literature and by historians. With the single exception of Elizabeth Manners, Duchess of Rutland, their efforts as estate managers, builders and farmers were disregarded. Praise was firmly focused on their philanthropy and good works, reinforcing the idea of the moral economy of the landed estate. This is understandable in the context of the time. The question is why modern historians, male and female, have accepted this interpretation for so long and adhered to the model of ‘separate spheres’. For challenging this assumption McDonagh certainly deserves her award.