Agricultural History Review, Volume 46 Part 1 (1998), pp. 15–34

This article challenges the pre-eminent role attributed to west Norfolk landowners in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and argues the case for east Norfolk landowners and their prior contribution to the development of Norfolk agriculture and estate management in the seventeenth century. Their personal involvement and sustained commitment to the idea of improvement started in the 1600s and lasted until the end of the century. This 'century of improvement' divided into four stages: the selection and reorganization of properties as a pre-condition to improvement from the 1600s to the 1620s; the consolidation and expansion of estates and enterprises which lasted until the mid-1640s; the period of reconstruction and experimentation which followed the Civil War and continued through the long recession until the mid-1690s; and finally, the standardization and simplification of estate management which was completed by the 1720s. These stages reveal the significance of organizational, political and cultural factors on the development of estates and agriculture. This paper will focus on the first two stages, and most particularly the achievements of Sir Henry Hobart of Blickling, between1596 and 1625, who emerges as a 'new hero of Norfolk agriculture'. 

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