Small landholdings: landownership and registration - research summary

1. Introduction

1.1 The aim 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, as recommended by the 2017 Review.^[1] Specifically, the study aimed to:

• Show how landownership relating to small landholdings has changed over the last 100 or so years (1911 to the present).
• Identify the potential to (re)establish a register for small landholdings.^[2]

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

• To identify how landownership relating to small landholdings has changed over the last 100 or so years, 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 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.