In real estate, a landed property or landed estate is a

property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, re ...

that generates

income Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. F ...

for the owner (typically a member of the

gentry Gentry (from Old French , from ) are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. ''Gentry'', in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to Landed property, landed es ...

) without the owner having to do the actual work of the estate. In medieval Western Europe, there were two competing systems of landed property;

manorialism Manorialism, also known as seigneurialism, the manor system or manorial system, was the method of land ownership (or "Land tenure, tenure") in parts of Europe, notably France and later England, during the Middle Ages. Its defining features incl ...

, inherited from the

Roman villa A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house in the territory of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Nevertheless, the term "Roman villa" generally covers buildings with the common ...

system, where a large estate is owned by the

Lord of the manor Lord of the manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England and Norman England, referred to the landholder of a historical rural estate. The titles date to the English Feudalism, feudal (specifically English feudal barony, baronial) system. The ...

and leased to tenants; and the

family farm A family farm is generally understood to be a farm owned and/or operated by a family. It is sometimes considered to be an Estate (land), estate passed down by inheritance. Although a recurring conceptual model, conceptual and archetype, archet ...

or '' Hof'' owned by and heritable within a

commoner A commoner, also known as the ''common man'', ''commoners'', the ''common people'' or the ''masses'', was in earlier use an ordinary person in a community or nation who did not have any significant social status, especially a member of neither ...

family (cf.

yeoman Yeoman is a noun originally referring either to one who owns and cultivates land or to the middle ranks of Serfdom, servants in an Peerage of England, English royal or noble household. The term was first documented in Kingdom of England, mid-1 ...

), inherited from

Germanic law Germanic law is a scholarly term used to describe a series of commonalities between the various law codes (the ''Leges Barbarorum'', 'laws of the barbarians', also called Leges) of the early Germanic peoples. These were compared with statements i ...

. A gentleman farmer is the largely historic term for a country gentleman who has a farm as part of his estate and farms mainly for pleasure rather than for profit. His acreage may vary from under ten to hundreds of acres. The gentleman farmer employed labourers and farm managers. However, according to the 1839 ''Encyclopedia of Agriculture'', he "did not associate with these minor working brethren". The chief source of income for the gentleman farmer was derived not from any income that his landed property may generate; he had either access to his own private income, worked as a professional and/or he owned a large business elsewhere, or all three. Modern landed property often consists of housing or industrial land, generating income in the form of rents or fees for services provided by the facilities on the land, such as port facilities. Owners often commission an estate map to help manage their estate as well as serving as a status symbol.A Sarah Bendall, ''Maps, Land and Society: A History, with a Carto-bibliography, of Cambridgeshire Estate Maps, 1600–1836 '' (Cambridge University Press, 1992) Landed property was a key element of

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...

, and freed the owner for other tasks, such as

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

administration,

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

service, the practice of law, or

religious Religion is a range of social- cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural ...

practices. In later times, the dominant role of landed estates as a basis of public service faded. Development of

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer ...

and

commerce Commerce is the organized Complex system, system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions that directly or indirectly contribute to the smooth, unhindered large-scale exchange (distribution through Financial transaction, transactiona ...

created

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...

means of obtaining income, but ordinarily demanding the attention of the owner. At roughly the same time, governments began imposing taxes to fund government bureaus and the military, so that people of talent could perform government services for salaries without need for the proceeds of ownership of farmland. Much of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, typically

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, and most states west of the original colonies, never had a landed

aristocracy Aristocracy (; ) is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocracy (class), aristocrats. Across Europe, the aristocracy exercised immense Economy, economic, Politics, political, and soc ...

, so their armed forces and government agencies could never be organized on the basis of a landed aristocracy.

Notes

{{Authority control Land tenure Gentry

See also

Notes