Cost of Running a British Estate In 1930ish

I'm not at home right now so can't look at my copy for particulars, but you might have a look at David Cannadine's The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, which deals with this subject.

I don't have any numbers, but my first question is what sort of estate and how big?

As in shooting estate with grouse moor and maybe salmon fishing in Yorkshire or Scotland? Or the "main" estate complete with parkland and a number of farms (from which income would have originally come but might now be money pits). You might want to pick a real estate as being the closest match for what you have in mind and search for history books on that actual estate. Incidentally, even today, Brits tend to distinguish between whether something is English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish and it would have been more so back then. Having said "shooting estate in Scotland" - there will also be farming estates in Scotland belonging to the Scottish aristocracy.

There is an autobiography called "Rose, My Life In Service" by Rosina Harrison which would give you some idea of servants wages in the period and the number of servants hired by a certain size of house - that covers between the wars with the Astors at Cliveden.

I do remember an older relative talking about the depression and how farms were producing milk, but they couldn't sell it because no-one had any money to buy it. They knew of one farm that turned all their milk into cheese and hoped to sell it once the depression was over and recover some of their losses that way.

Well, they are all very nice houses - but I wouldn't call any of them in the current format an estate - not nearly enough land.

You might want to research into entails and check what size of properties they tended to apply to and other restrictions and probabilities.

Servants -especially if cleaners just coming in for the day I would expect to be mostly local so could be expected to have more local accents - but I could be entirely wrong about that. No idea how much servants would improve themselves in terms of elocution. You are certainly right that you don't want to give lots of mannerisms to lots of characters, but while you want the staff to be more neutral, I think you should avoid uniformity. Also you need to distinguish between them being on best behaviour and being polite and unobtrusive when on duty - opening doors quietly, walking quietly, not slamming doors, speaking quietly unless announcing a visitor - and how they are when off duty. On duty they may well be fairly uniform and neutral.
There would also be timetabling so the house occupants are not troubled by cleaners thundering through.

There is also status (and expense) to which servants you have - butlers and footmen are expensive. In smaller places you might be looking at cook/housekeeper plus maid, gardener plus gardener's boy (who can be an adult) and extra help taken on as needed from "the village". The maid and the gardener's boy might not be live in.

Bolero said:

As in shooting estate with grouse moor and maybe salmon fishing in Yorkshire or Scotland?

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There is no salmon fishing in Yorkshire.

My house is bigger than the ones you linked to, OP. It used to be a shooting lodge, and was used for two weeks out of the year, when the landowners came here to bag grouse. A gamekeeper and housekeeper (married couple) lived here year-round to keep things going. I think the grouse moors that belonged to the same owner ran to about 1,000 acres at that time.

They also owned a smaller but more manageable and accessible house, which they lived in during the summer, a farm house which is still rented to the local shepherd; three smaller cottages, where the gamekeepers now live. The shepherd runs his sheep across the moors, but there is no other farming here as the land is too bleak (this is the Peak District, and we get a lot of weather here).

Then there was their business, which still works today: a snuff mill, that used to supply snuff across the country, and a series of industrial units on that same industrial estate. I believe they used to own a lot more land in the town than that, and had a string of rental properties.

I believe they also had a large house in London, and something in Scotland too, which also had shooting. And this was not a large or grand estate, just the estate of a businessman made good.

lonestarlibrarian said:

It's very hard for me to identify that spot in the middle between "this is practically Versailles" vs "I'm envisioning a gamekeeper's lodge."

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You really need to work this out, or your book won't be plausible.

Try to develop more of an eye for architecture, too. Of the three houses you linked to, the second and third are grand enough to suggest wealth, and perhaps that they might be part of an estate. But the first--St Margaret's--looks to me more like a cottage, and perhaps it was originally more than one house. Not sure, though. It's more typical, I think, of a far less wealthy family (it brings to my mind the sort of house the Bennett family, of Pride and Prejudice, might have lived in). And remember that it was typical for even the less wealthy to have household staff, so this is not an indicator of wealth.

lonestarlibrarian said:

But I also know that a square mile of land in Texas isn't necessarily relatively self-sufficient, which is why you have so many monster ranches. And we tend more towards a monocrop, because we have more factory farms, and because land that's good for cotton can't sustain corn or sugar. I would expect Britain, especially of the period, to be more diverse. But I'm also not sure about the mechanics of how fields are sub-leased to farmers, what's farmed directly by the estate itself, and so on. In fiction, all I see is a helpful "land manager" who occasionally shows up to talk business, and then they disappear off-page.

My (poor, rural) town IRL is a square mile, and has a population of about 3200. It's my understanding the difference between a village and a hamlet is that a village has a church. But beyond that, I'm not clear on what kind of population relies on the estate for its livelihood-- whether it's farming or sheep or fishing or mining or whatever.

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It was typical for large estates to own lots of property: land, farms, houses. And much of this would be in the hands of tenant farmers, etc, who would all use the land and other resources in varying ways. So, here in the Peak District, moorland would be used for shooting, which was primarily an entertainment rather than a commercial enterprise (it's become far more commercial now), but the moorland grazing rights would be rented to shepherds, usually, as the grazing isn't good enough for cows and the landscape is too extreme for them; and there would also sometimes be some sort of arrangement for someone to have the right to shoot rabbits, for example, although poaching has always been rife. So there was a layered approach to how some landscapes were run. Areas where the landscape is more open to cultivation--where it's more accessible, the weather is less extreme, and the soil is deeper and of better quality--would tend to be divided into parkland and fields. Parkland, again, was mostly there for its entertainment value although herds of deer could run there (there are a few deer here, which we think have wandered away from Chatsworth House's herds), and of course if there was a decent river, fishing rights would be a thing. Once land is turned into fields it's harder to keep that layered use going.

And mining could happen underneath just about anything, of course--but again, it has always been common for land owners to rent out their mineral rights in return for a royalty on every tonne extracted.

Back in 1930s mixed farming was common, even in the lusher lowlands - so one farm keeping animals and arable crops, some of the arable crops being intended for winter feed for the animals. Not just hay, but mangols and oats for example. Probably selling the surplus in a good year. Tenant farmers would pay rent to the big house. You then get into complexities about leases - who is responsible for which repairs and maintenance. I think it would be most common for it to be the tenant farmer to be doing repairs on what is effectively a commercial lease, but not certain. Where it is a domestic property, it is generally the landlord who pays for repairs. Dilapidations is a useful word for you.
In terms of land you can also run into problems of it not being maintained for productiveness - so hillsides over-run with bracken and no grass for the sheep, or drainage ditches not maintained and what was good grazing turning into a marsh. Rule of thumb, most years, the weather problems in the UK is too much water, not too little - though there are exceptions which have caused problems. The western side of the country is wetter than the eastern.
We rarely have long periods of the same weather - you might have a week, or even two weeks of sunshine with little or no rain, but rarely longer - so for the landscape to get parched is unusual.

One thought - the estate at Heligan is well documented thanks to the garden restoration. That was 1,000 acres. https://www.heligan.com/the-story/introduction. Lots of books on Heligan both current costs and history.
That was 1,000 acres of land - which is the sort of number that "feels" like an estate to me. Also DVD of documentary on garden restoration.

Oh and in terms of tenant farmers - lots of estates had "home farm" and that was run for the benefit of the house - as in all the produce was feeding the house and that was a different arrangement. Milk, butter, cream, eggs, meat, maybe veg or that would be the kitchen garden.

Another thought on estate sizes for you. The Duke of Marlborough was given a grant of money by Parliament - and the grateful nation - so he could have a grand house and estate. It is very grand (what you don't want) and he had to go back to Parliament several times for more money to finish it. Blenheim (called after one of his victories) is one of the vast stately homes - in fact it is known as Blenheim Palace https://www.blenheimpalace.com/

A hundred years later, the Duke of Wellington, was given a grant of money by a grateful nation via Parliament for his victory at Waterloo and he bought an existing house and estate and did it up a bit. I've been round there as a tourist - and one of the things he spent money on was a very early central heating system. The estate mentioned there is 350 acres. http://www.wellingtonestates.co.uk/

In terms of running an estate, I'm going to echo the point about rental income from property to support a country estate. The Duke of Westminster has massive holdings (https://www.grosvenorestate.com/), including a lot of London real estate - they own a lot of Harley Street - which is the premier address for private medicine in the UK - they rent it to consultants and clinics. The Dukes of Westminster have two seats - as in country house estates.