The pretty and practical art form documenting Britain’s great estates

Our understanding of early country estates comes largely from written chronicles rather than maps, but the Elizabethan era marked a turning point. In the second half of the 16th century, Dutch Protestants brought advanced drafting skills and new measuring instruments that honed cartographical accuracy.

These developments coincided with the transformation of the old medieval feudal order under the Tudors: Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries blurred boundaries and created a demand to survey and establish distinct ownership over tracts of land. Enter the estate map, a declaration of status and possession.

Suffolk-born Ralph Agas (1540–1621) is largely known today for his town plans, especially the one he created of Oxford. However, he was also one of the first cartographers to map landed estates, such as Henry Cheney’s Toddington estate in Bedfordshire.

More than 100 years later, the 3rd Duke of Richmond employed Dutch engraver Thomas Yeakell — who had served under him in the army — as his personal surveyor to the Goodwood estate in West Sussex. Yeakell was joined by surveyor William Gardner and the duo became celebrated cartographers, embarking on the first complete mapping of an English county: Sussex.

After Yeakell died, Gardner worked with Thomas Gream to complete the map, which was published in 1797. A precursor to Ordnance Survey maps, it includes a detailed rendition of the medieval park at the Duke of Norfolk’s Arundel Castle and the estate’s Rewell Wood. Every farmhouse, barn and garden is carefully depicted, as well as the type of fence in each enclosure.

‘The map illustrates the area before it became the home farm in 1797, showing the landscape as a mix of ancient woodland and deer park,’ explains Dr John Martin Robinson, librarian to the current Duke. ‘It’s a valuable record of the evolution of the estate and is a landmark in British mapping.’

A 1788 map by Claude Joseph Sauthier, meanwhile, shows Alnwick Castle in Northumberland and its domains. Born in Strasbourg and the son of a saddler, Sauthier trained as an architect and surveyor before sailing to America, where he carried out military mapping for the British colonial government.

In New York, he met Hugh Percy, the future 2nd Duke of Northumberland, who was serving as a British officer during the American War of Independence. When Percy returned to England in 1777, he brought Sauthier with him. Sauthier completed more than 20 maps of the ducal estates, which are still in use today.

‘The forestry department will refer to Sauthier’s maps showing the layout of Capability Brown’s planting efforts in order to guide plans for replanting, for instance,’ notes Ralph Percy, the 12th Duke of Northumberland. ‘They are used in registration of ownership, particularly mineral registrations, and are relevant in relation to planning applications for developing land.’

Modern-day equivalents continue to be commissioned, physically documenting land-holdings of all shapes and sizes. This may seem surprising in an increasingly digital world — yet to many this is the attraction.

‘You may have a 1,000-acre-plus estate, but only a handful of people have a deep knowledge of it and how it works,’ points out sixth-generation Hampshire farmer and owner of Rural Maps Anthony Pelly, who creates maps of all kinds for private landowners worldwide. ‘As that knowledge is being steadily eroded, it needs pinning down. Despite the availability of digital versions, physical maps are still very much in demand: I have been in a room with Gainsboroughs ignored as everyone crowds around an estate map. They invite comment and engagement in a way nothing else does.’

Although estate maps serve as tools for land management, in their decorative form they also present intimate family portraits. Often personalised, today they are more likely to feature a leaping salmon for the keen angler or a ruined Roman temple for the antiquarian than an array of heraldic flourishes.

‘My maps have included cherished details such as a wedding marquee on a hill, a beloved dog or children jumping ponies in the corner of a field,’ continues Pelly. Actual portraits are rare, but this was ever the case: the estate map of Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, of about 1607 is highly unusual in having a medallion portrait of Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, at the top of the title cartouche.

Securing their owner’s place in the long line of custodians of the land, these maps serve as a time capsule for future generations. ‘It’s early days, but I would like to see the profession evolve so that when someone buys a significant estate for the first time, they not only employ a gardener, an estate manager and an architect, but a cartographer as well,’ says Pelly.

Estate maps can also reveal hidden features that could present difficulties for owners. ‘We were once instructed on a Cotswolds estate that had been deliberately left to run fallow for 30 years,’ he adds. ‘On site, we found hidden pools of water no one knew about, even the local shepherds. It explained why some of the fields became waterlogged and allowed for drainage to be improved.’

There can also be a poignancy in what is captured. ‘Within field names, you get glimpses into the past,’ observes Edel Fenelon, an artist from Co Carlow in Ireland who draws rural landholdings. ‘They categorise functions, preserve the names of families long gone or record events: you might have Kiln Field, where the bricks were laid out, or Kelly Field, even when the Kellys haven’t lived in the area for hundreds of years.’

The idea for her business sprang from a map she created of her childhood farm as a birthday present for her father. ‘Growing up on a farm, you see how much work and dedication goes into its upkeep and that’s not only one lifetime: you have three, four, maybe five generations working the land for that estate to still exist. The maps show heritage and roots.’

Although many estate maps include farms as part of the demesne, the earliest dedicated farm maps in England and Wales were mid-19th-century tithe maps. An extraordinary achievement, depicting almost every landowner, farm and field — noting whether it was arable, meadow, pasture or woodland — they were commissioned to create a nationwide record so that tithes (payment in kind through crops or livestock) could be replaced by cash.

Today, with more people owning farms than estates, farms are core drivers of the aesthetic map resurgence. ‘On the rural consultancy side, we are seeing more and more people looking for “real-artist” produced plans of their ownership, in particular the owner-occupier farm owner rather than the larger estates,’ confirms Jamie Evans-Freke, who heads the rural asset management team at Knight Frank’s Horsham office in West Sussex.

Capturing the essence of a place is a significant undertaking and, when the artist Aengus Dewar was asked to draw an estate in the north of England, he did detailed research into its history. Uncovering that a Second World War US B17 bomber returning from the infamous Schweinfurt Raid had crashed on the borders of the estate — unknown to the owners — he recorded the event by depicting the plane in the spot where it landed. ‘We live in uncertain times,’ he says. ‘The desire to connect with history and imprint yourself on the landscape, which is enduring, is very natural.’

These maps were reproduced with the kind permission of the Trustees of the Goodwood Collection and the County Archivist, West Sussex Record Office; Collection of the Duke of Northumberland.

This feature originally appeared in the June 3, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.