There's an interesting and well-researched book about wealth, especially hereditary and linked to land holdings in England, that addresses the question: Who Owns England? by Guy Shrubsole.
There's a Guardian review from 2019 [1] that covers the gist of the subject.
Here's a sample paragraph:
When once asked how young entrepreneurs might succeed in Britain, the late Duke of Westminster, Gerald Grosvenor (owner of 131,000 acres, including much of London’s Belgravia and central Liverpool), observed, drily, that they should “make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror”. Though Shrubsole estimates that the recent sell-off of ancestral lands to the “new money” of hedge-funders and oligarchs accounts for perhaps 17% of the total in England, 30% rests in the hands of the feudal Norman “cousinhood”, whose offspring have until recently preserved their birthright with a Downton-esque doggedness.
There's a Guardian review from 2019 [1] that covers the gist of the subject.
Here's a sample paragraph:
When once asked how young entrepreneurs might succeed in Britain, the late Duke of Westminster, Gerald Grosvenor (owner of 131,000 acres, including much of London’s Belgravia and central Liverpool), observed, drily, that they should “make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror”. Though Shrubsole estimates that the recent sell-off of ancestral lands to the “new money” of hedge-funders and oligarchs accounts for perhaps 17% of the total in England, 30% rests in the hands of the feudal Norman “cousinhood”, whose offspring have until recently preserved their birthright with a Downton-esque doggedness.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/28/who-owns-engla...