Over the last 600 years in England, the British nobility have constructed some of the most beautiful country estates

imaginable. Grand houses in all the styles of classical and Victorian architecture, surrounded

with enormous estates, sometimes tens of thousands of acres on

rolling green hills, wooded groves, beautiful rivers and ponds and all the wildlife you'd

expect on such a property. To keep these estates intact, the families followed the law of primogeniture in which the first-born male would inherit the entirety of the estate,

rather than dividing it amongst all the children.

These estates, enormously costly affairs, often full of magnificent art collections and dozens

of full-time servants, were funded largely through the income of the surrounding land, which would be

profitably farmed by tenant families.

Some of these estates can still be seen today such as Windsor Castle, Hampton Court Palace, Blenham Place, Chatsworth House and

Darbyshire of Pride and Prejudice Fame, or Highclare Castle, the real setting for

the fictional TV series, Downtown Abbey. I remember visiting some of these castles and

manners as a lad of about eight or nine when my family was stationed in London for

my dad's officer exchange service with the Royal Air Force. They are unbelievably stunning places to visit. But

most of them, in fact probably at this point the vast majority, are long

demolished, land parceled out, and gone.

So what happened?

Well, lots of things happen.

After World War II, for example,

to attempt to rebuild its destroyed and debt-crippled government, the Brits raised inheritance taxes, called a state duty, to 60%, then 80%, even hitting an all-time high of about 85% in the late 60s. This meant that fathers couldn't pass these

estates on to their eldest male heirs without also passing on a tax bill.

It was often in the tens of millions of pounds.

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