Country estate

“ CHAPTER III Shopping for Property
The early American pioneer pushed into the wilderness looking for a likely spot to settle. When he had either found it or had traveled as far as he could, he staked out land and built a rude shelter for his family until such time as he could afford better. Today's pioneer decides whether he will have a house and five or more acres in commuting distance of the city, a farm several hours away from it, or a sporting estate. Then, still seated in an easy chair, he reaches for real estate advertising as found in newspaper, magazine or folder. ”

“ Territorial possessions are, there is no doubt, but lightly esteemed in your country, which is perhaps owing to the fact that the British or Anglo-Americans of to-day only date back to Penn and his colony, or only a hundred years or so. An estate over here rarely remains ten or twelve years in the same hands. ”

“ Our country [54] estate is a few acres of poor land, which we rent on shares, and from which we get a few bushels of corn, an occasional load of firewood, and a few barrels of potatoes. As for my own life, I husband our small resources ”

“ Land could be rented out at ten times the original value. Land was typically rented out for 7, 14, or 21 years. Great fortunes were made by large landowners who built grand country estates. The manufacturers and merchants made much money, but agriculture was still the basis of the national wealth. ”

“ Many of them have purchased large estates. The extensive farms they occupy, generally on leases of nine years, are the domains and estates of the nobles, which, before 1784, were cultivated by the serfs, who were, before that period, adscripti glebæ, and who were bound to work every day, without wages, on the main farm of the feudal lord, and had cottages and land, on the outskirts of the estate, to work upon for their own living when they were not wanted on the farm of the baron. ”

“ Hence, an imitation of the high, extended, castellated mansions of England, or the Continent, although in miniature, are altogether unsuited to the American farmer or planter, whose lands, instead of increasing in his family, are continually subject to division, or to sale in mass, on his own demise; and when the estate is encumbered with unnecessarily 25 large and expensive buildings, they become an absolute drawback to its value in either event. ”

“ Villages are turned into towns and property in land changes from the holding worked by a farmer or the estate administered by a landlord into "rents," which are advertised and bought and sold like any other investment. ”

“ City real estate was not subject to the extreme fluctuating processes which so disordered the value of rural land. All of the tendencies and currents of the times favored the building up of an aristocracy based upon ownership of city property. ”

“ The typical continental countryside is that of tiny white-washed or wooden broad-eaved cottages, freely scattered over a region of fruit and flowers and close-tilled coveted land, which, in fact, is one large garden. The record of the great landowners of this country is of vast accumulations of acres: aggregations of whole counties, or estates dotted over many counties, each organised on the same plan of inherited feudal tradition. ”

“ The reserves of land in the neighbourhood of towns will be a great accommodation to those who might wish to have a few acres in the vicinity of the capital or a market town, for general purposes, or for the erection of a villa, when increase of wealth should induce them to leave their allotment up the country for relaxation or pleasure ”

“ A quick-eyed land-agent would then trace the boundaries of the Sowerby estate from the rising ground, either by the size of its trees, its natural sterility, or by the rough, gateless fences, where it adjoins the neighbouring proprietors. ”

“ One saw an artificial lake of ten thousand acres, made upon land which had cost several hundred dollars an acre; one saw gardens with ten thousand rose-bushes, and a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of lilies from Japan; there was one estate in which had been planted a million dollars’ worth of rare trees, imported from all over the world. Some rich men, who had nothing else to amuse them, would make their estates over and over again, changing the view about their homes as one changes the scenery in a play. ”

“ The castle or manor-house of the baron or lord, into which the thegn’s hall had now developed, was the centre of rural life. Around it lay the home-farm, the lord’s demesne land, cultivated partly by free tenants, partly by the customary labour due from the villeins whose cottages clustered on its border, and whose holdings, with a tract of common pasture and common woodland, made up the remainder of the estate. ”

“ The various accommodation appurtenant to the dwelling, makes ample provision for the household convenience of the family, and the main business of the farm may be at some distance, without inconvenience to the owner's every-day affairs. Consequently, the indulgence of a considerable degree of ornament may be given, in the surroundings of his dwelling, which the occupant of a less extensive estate would neither require, nor his circumstances warrant. A natural forest of stately trees, properly thinned out, is the most appropriate spot on which to build a house of this character. ”

“ Many were stampeded into buying worthless acres which they did not want, in the fear that if they delayed there would be nothing left to buy. Fake real-estate schemes—colonies, ten-acre orchard tracts, hen farms, orange groves, prune plantations—flourished over the width and length of a continent, and promoters reaped a harvest. ”

“ It should combine all the advantages of soil, cultivation, water, shade, and shelter, which the most liberal gratification, consistent with the circumstances of the owner, may demand. If a site on the estate command a prospect of singular beauty, other things equal, the dwelling should embrace it; if the luxury of a stream, or a sheet of water in repose, present itself, it should, if possible, be enjoyed ”

“ I like the people—what little I have seen of them; and if I can get a picturesque bit of territory somewhere along this western coast, I should like to give my family a kind of foothold in Europe, and I dare say my boy might be glad to spend his autumns here, and have a turn at the grouse. But for the most part of the time the place would be under control of the factor; and I want a factor who will work the estate under certain specified conditions. First, no foresting. Then I would have the crofts revalued—as fairly as might be; no crofter to be liable to removal who paid his rent. ”

“ The country seats of the great land proprietors, with their accompaniments of lawn and plantation, extending as far as the eye can reach, form a part of the picture; and so do the cottages of the village peasantry, with their little gardens before the door, admitting a peep into the interior of the humble abode. In the aristocratical dwellings, half hidden in that paradise of groves and glades, we find every refinement that gold can purchase, or taste produce: in the huts, comfort, and its inseparable adjunct cleanliness, are the most striking characteristics. ”

“ They do not build them in villages or towns but separate each from the other according to the size of the estate the owner of the house possesses; they are always in the woods and no more ground is cleard away for each house than is Just sufficient to hinder the Dropping of the branches from rotting the thatch with which they are coverd, so that you step from the house immediately under shade and that the most beautifull imaginable. ”

“ Because I mean you to be returned Member of Parliament for the Borough—and you shall sit in the Upper House among the other nobs as Baron Jowell by-and-by! There’s a pretty estate of ten thousand acres of park and stubble, covert and woodland, will be on the market presently—and a sixty acre o’ clay upland freehold within a mile o’ Market Drowsing—with a homestead and some good gore meadows—suitable to build a Stud Farm and Kennels on—as I’ve a mortgage on and mean to have by-and-by. ”

“ The lands belonging to it are very fertile, and in full bearing; but I will not conceal from you, this estate is situated on the boundaries of the Atlas mountains,—that is, near the outposts, and exposed to the frequent attacks of the Arabs, and one must be as much of a soldier as a husbandman: it is, at the same time, a redoubt and a farm. The man who occupies this dwelling in the absence of the proprietor will explain everything to you ”

“ It is that of a large estate where the whole of one, and oftener of several, adjoining parishes are included in it; where there is no other landowner within the ring fence; where the village itself belongs to the same owner as the agricultural land ; where all the people of the district—farmers, tradesmen, labourers—are dependent, directly or indirectly, on the one landowner, the farmers holding their land from him, generally on a yearly tenancy, the labourers hiring their cottages weekly or yearly either from the landowner or from the farmer ”

“ More people will come here from time to time, attracted by our enterprise and the rugged beauty of our county; real estate will become more valuable, trade will prosper and every one of the old inhabitants will find opportunities to make money. ”

“ The farms on the estate have been put in complete order, new farm-houses built of stone, in the picturesque and comfortable style of the old English granges; the hereditary tenants secured in their paternal homes, and treated with the most considerate indulgence; everything, in a word, gives happy indications of a liberal and beneficent landlord. ”

“ From the big farm agencies run for profit you can get lists of thousands of properties for sale. Some State Agricultural Departments cooperate with real estate men in their own states, by referring inquiries for farms to them. ”

“ To the farmer proper—he who lives from the income which the farm produces—it is important to know the extent of accommodation required for the economical management of his estate, and then to build in accordance with it, as well as to suit his own position in life, and the station which he and his family hold in society. The owner of a hundred acre farm, living upon the income he receives from it, will require less house room than he who tills equally well his farm of three, six, or ten hundred acres. ”

“ In England, where the ownership of land carries with it a certain social dignity, and where the mere possession of money has a less marked influence in this direction, there is no doubt that the title-deeds to broad acres constitute a certain sort of patent of nobility. In this country, where land is plenty and cheap and where large fortunes are rare, a farmer gets consideration less for the amount of land that he himself owns, than for the sum-total of the mortgages which he holds upon his neighbors' land. ”

“ Holding our tenures as we do, with no privilege of entail to our posterity, an eye to his own interest, or to that of his family who is to succeed to his estate, should admonish the builder of a house to the adoption of a plan which will, in case of the sale of the estate, involve no serious loss. He should build such a house as will be no detriment, in its expense, to the selling value of the land on which it stands, and always fitted for the spot it occupies. ”

“ Lloyd's estate comprised twenty-seven thousand acres, and the home-farm seven thousand. In my boyhood sixty men were employed in cultivating the home farm alone. Now, by the aid of machinery, the work is accomplished by ten men. ”

“ The term 'real estate' includes all lands within the territory to which title or right to title has been acquired; all mines, minerals and quarries, in and under the land, and all rights and privileges appertaining thereto and improvements. ”

“ Wherefore, the King, our Sovereign Lord, by the assent and advice, etc., etc., ordereth, enacteth, and establisheth that no person, what estate, degree, or condition he be, that hath any house or houses, that at any time within the past three years hath been, or that now is, or heretofore shall be, let to farm with twenty acres of land at least, or more, laying in tillage or husbandry ”

“ Nothing is left for construction, as the subsequent act provides that the term 'lands' shall be construed as coextensive in meaning with lands, tenements, and hereditaments, and that the terms 'estate and interest in lands' shall be construed to embrace every estate and interest, freehold and chattel, legal and equitable, present and future, vested and contingent. ”

“ Small patches of one-tenth or even one-twentieth of an acre are to be found as the estate of an individual landowner, and the vast majority of holdings run between one and three acres. With three acres a family is deemed very comfortable, and the possession of ten acres means luxury. ”

“ If he travels through our rural districts he views not the hostile castle, and the haughty mansion, contrasted with the clay- built hut and miserable cabin, where cattle and men help to keep each other warm, and dwell in meanness, smoke, and indigence. A pleasing uniformity of decent competence appears throughout our habitations. The meanest of our log-houses is a dry and comfortable habitation. Lawyer or merchant are the fairest titles our towns afford; that of a farmer is the only appellation of the rural inhabitants of our country. ”

“ Can an estate of many thousands of acres be developed and cultivated to its fullest extent in every corner under the guidance of one individual, who, even though he may have exceptional knowledge of farming and may use skilled agents, is nevertheless concerned with many other interests which he desires to serve? Are there any of the large estates which can be pointed to as models? ”