At the beginning of the industrial revolution Wales had been legally assimilated into England since the 1530s and there were more parallels between Wales' landowning society and England than was the case with Scotland and Ireland.
Aristocratic landowners like the Earls of Worcester, created Dukes of Beaufort in the 17th century, and their kindred, the Herbert Earls of Pembroke were both powerful and important owners of Welsh land, but their estates in Wales were part of far larger estates in England. At the start of the industrial revolution and a growing demand for coal and iron, as owners of mineral rights, they were the main employers of labour and in many counties, lay impropriation gave them a strong hold over the Church. Some local families had owned relatively large amounts of land since the fifteenth century but by the eighteenth century local ancestry was less important in a society with an obvious oligarchy of greater gentry, like the Bulkeleys of Anglesey, the Mostyns of Flint and the Wynns of Wynnstay. with incomes over £3.000 per annum The number of families with incomes over £3,000 was, however, far fewer than of those with £1,000 per annum who formed the backbone of the squirearchy.
As in England, the larger Welsh landowners increased their control over the land at the expense of those minor squires with incomes below £500 per annum There was little to choose between many minor squires and yeomen except than the former were rentiers not farmers. Old-established, but small, estates ceased to be independent units, especially between 1720 and 1760, when there was a high failure of direct male heirs, and they either devolved upon heiresses or passed to distant male heirs, often from England. Old family names disappeared except where new landowners believed they could derive advantage from them. For example, in marrying into the Tredegar family, the Goulds adopted the name of Morgan, thus concealing the genealogical breach. Welsh gentry benefited from the increased number of peerages from the 1780s. The Rice family of Dinefwr received a peerage and a substantial fortune by marrying into a London banking family almost at the same time. By English standards, spending on building programmes was small. However, many old houses like Powis and Chirk Castles were restored; Georgian-style houses, though not numerous, are fairly well distributed in Wales and landscaping of grounds was widespread.
Estates were run more professionally, especially with the appointment of stewards. As in England, the gentry exploited the resources on their estates. In Cardiganshire and Flintshire they were pioneers in the lead industry, in Glamorgan they started ironworks and in Pembrokeshire they worked coal. But few actually exploited resources personally and were content to receive royalties and rents which substantially increased their incomes.
The gulf between the greater gentry and the smaller freeholders and tenant farmers was immense and, as in England, the gulf grew wider during the eighteenth century. Demographic change and the increasingly commercial altitude of some larger gentry militated against the community leadership, which they had previously commanded. Court records show that some landlords ruthlessly raised rents or used force to remove tenants who opposed the consolidation of estates. Literary sources indicate that landlords were seen as scheming and grasping. Traditional tenant altitudes and rights cut across new commercial altitudes and this increased tensions and widened the social gulf. Language and religion exacerbated the social divisions.
As in England, industrialism was to transform the role of Welsh landowners, though it was a process not completed by 1850. It created great wealth, particularly in South Wales, which some landowners, like the Creighton Stuarts of Cardiff, the Morgans of Tredegar and the Pennant family in North Wales, were willing to exploit and others did not. However, in rural Wales a changing social structure was far less evident. The tenant farmer still dominated life in remarkably stable communities There were few substantial freeholders in Wales equivalent to the English yeomen and the distinction between tenant farmers and their labourers was one of status rather than wealth. Population growth meant that demand for farm tenancies remained high and it was labourers, unable to get farms, who migrated to the towns to provide the human resource for driving the diverse services which supported industrial revolution.