Estate maps

The following source list was originally available only on paper in one of the West Yorkshire Archive Service offices. It may have been compiled many years ago and could be out of date. It was designed to act as a signpost to records of interest on a particular historical subject, but may relate only to one West Yorkshire district, or be an incomplete list of sources available.

Estate maps can date from any period; they started to appear in the late 16th century, but became more widespread and accurate by the 18th century. They can show anything from one farm to a vast estate. Their general purpose was to show the estate of one landowner or one family.

Estate maps are functional maps which might be created for a variety of reasons and therefore often show only what was of interest to the landowner at the time (and thus may not depict everything that may have existed at the time.) They will also vary greatly in scale, size, content and detail as estate maps were made by a large number of local individual surveyors.

Because estate maps vary so much it is very difficult to make broad statements about them. In general, estate maps will show part or all of a particular landowners holdings which might be small or cover several parishes. They may show areas not owned by the landowner who commissioned the map, however, unless this is important e.g. in a boundary dispute, the information may be less detailed or accurate as it wasn’t of principle interest to the map-maker.

Estate maps may depict fields, boundaries, woods, orchards, buildings, marshes, bridges, toll-bars, gardens, quarries, mines, waterways, roads, tracks, vegetation, and industrial sites. Sometimes buildings may be shown in elevation or perspective giving more information about the buildings' architecture. Early estate maps in particular may be accompanied by written surveys or ‘books of reference’ too which gives detail about fields and plots of land, owners and land use, much like tithe apportionments or enclosure awards.

Estate maps may be the basis for enclosure or tithe maps or vice versa. Ordnance Survey maps, in particular, can be used as the basis for estate plans.

Estate maps are usually found in archives among estate papers, but they may also be found in antiquarian or historians personal papers, solicitors papers or court records. If a landowner held lands in different counties their records may not be held in the record office you would expect.

Sometimes estate maps may not survive even though they were made, or for many reasons may not be deposited with an archive office. Plans are attractive so they may be held in private hands, with the current owners of the estate, or relatives of the estate owners past or present.