The Structure of Landownership and Land Occupation in the Romney Marsh Region, 1646–1834

This article offers a contribution to the long-running debate about the causes and chronology of the emergence of large-scale commercial tenant farming in England. Remarkably comprehensive evidence covering 44,000 acres in Romney Marsh (Kent) discloses a consolidation of landownership and the increasing dominance of large tenant farms during the century after the Restoration, but also demonstrates conclusively that these trends were unconnected, and that they were reversed during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when there was a notable revival of owner-occupation on the marsh. It is argued that tenant initiative and shifts in the level of consumer demand were the forces driving developments throughout the long-eighteenth century.