In the 1900s, not long after it was founded, Country Life entered into the debate about the use of agricultural land. With cheap grain being imported from the Americas, land in the British Isles was not as profitable for agriculture and the magazine was supportive of the Liberal policy to grant more rights to more people to keep the rural economy going, encouraging large estate owners into dividing up their property into viable plots with tenant rights. It was an attempt to preserve rural England through adaptation and gave rise to a golden era of housebuilding: work by Philip Webb, Richard Norman Shaw, C. F. A. Voysey, and Sir Edwin Lutyens graced the magazine's pages. It was a historical moment that came back to me when I visited Bridport in West Dorset.

The architectural debate around

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