Land agents were critical to the management of landed estates and provided an important interface between landowners and tenants.聽 Yet until recently their role in the rural, agricultural, social, cultural and environmental histories of Wales has been under-researched.
In October 2015, ISWE partnered with the , and the to host a workshop centred on the role of the Land Agent on landed estates across England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the wider British Empire.聽 This underpinned a seminal collection of essays on the subject, entitled聽The Land Agent 1700-1920聽(Edinburgh, 2018), co-edited by Dr. Lowri Ann Rees, Dr. Ciar谩n Reilly and Dr. Annie Tindley.聽 The volume features case-study chapters looking at land agents in nineteenth-century Carmarthenshire, and on the Penrhyn estate in Caernarfonshire.
The land agent has since emerged as an important focus for ISWE鈥檚 research.
In 2024, Dr. Lowri Ann Rees published聽The Middleman at Middleton Hall, based on a collection of letters written by Thomas Herbert Cooke across the 1840s, reflecting on his experience as land agent on the Middleton Hall estate in Carmarthenshire during the Rebecca Riots of the 1840s.聽聽听补苍诲 read about Lowri's book launch.聽