Small landholdings: landownership and registration - report

1. Introduction

1.1. The purpose of this research project was to provide an insight and narrative into how small landholdings [SLHs] were established and how their ownership has changed over time. Specifically, the study aimed to:

• Show how landownership relating to small landholdings has changed over the last century (1911 to the present).
• Identify the potential to (re)establish a register for small landholdings.

1.2. As such, the research objectives for this project were as follows:

• To identify how landownership relating to small landholdings has changed over the last century, recording changes to status or tenure type, particularly where no record has been made.
• To identify what (and how much) compensation in its various forms was originally paid to landlords and large estates.
• To identify the potential to (re)establish a new administrative register for small landholdings.

1.3. The research team constituted of an academic historian with expertise in landownership in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a land law academic, who worked on a consultative basis and a research assistant who undertook most of the archival work which underpins this report. More detail can be found in Section 6.

1.4. SLHs were usually established as schemes, consisting of multiple individual units established and arranged concurrently, depending on the land and sites available. For instance, if the Board of Agriculture for Scotland (BoAS) purchased or was offered a large farm, they would break up that farm into multiple lots and assign small landholders to each unit. These could be quite small, perhaps two or sometimes even a single small landholder, but were more commonly larger, from ten to fifteen units per scheme. The advantage of larger schemes was that the set-up costs in terms of roads, water supplies, draining etc were more economic.