Agricultural Holdings (England) Act 1883 Explained

Short Title:Agricultural Holdings (England) Act 1883
Type:Act
Parliament:Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long Title:An Act for amending the Law relating to Agricultural Holdings in England.
Year:1883
Citation:46 & 47 Vict. c. 61
Royal Assent:25 August 1883

The Agricultural Holdings (England) Act 1883 (46 & 47 Vict. c. 61) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by William Ewart Gladstone's Liberal government.

The Agricultural Holdings (England) Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 92) had provided a list of improvements for whose unexhausted value a departing tenant farmer could claim compensation from the landlord.[1] However, compensation was not compulsory and so many landlords contracted out of the act's provisions. The 1883 act made compensation for the tenants' improvements compulsory and according to F. M. L. Thompson "marked for the first time the compulsory intervention of the law in the supposedly voluntarily bargains made between tenants and landlord".[2]

The act came into force in 1885.[3]

Notes and References

  1. Christable S. Orwin and Edith H. Whetham, History of British Agriculture 1846-1914 (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971), p. 171.
  2. F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1971), p. 196.
  3. Orwin and Whetham, p. 247.