Cotton into Land

Abstract

Land’s attraction for outside capital was amplified by nineteenth-century industrial profits, helping to perpetuate and deepen the estate system. A concentrated study is made of Lancashire cotton masters as they entered land in sequence, first close to their mills, then further afield and finally in distant counties. Some chose to move to fashionable spa towns and all tended to furnish their houses with museum quality goods like paintings. Among receiving counties, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, where money from the iron trade has earlier been deposited, are singled out. Entrants from the cotton industry successfully adopted the practices of elite landed society by becoming justices of the peace and deputy lieutenants of their adopted counties and by sending their sons to leading public schools.