Skip to main content

The maps, essentially private records of ownership or occupation  also aided estate management and served as legal evidence in disputes and probate.  Agrarian changes encouraged a constant demand for estate maps.

What are estate maps?

The National Library of Wales has a large and important collection of manuscript estate maps relating to Wales; ranging in date from the 16th century to the 20th century. Only a few large Welsh estates were surveyed before 1760, the majority of surveys being undertaken between 1760 and 1800. The term “Estate maps” is used for a wide range of plans i.e. from a map showing an individual property to large volumes depicting the entire lands of a large estate. 

They also vary from being intricate, highly detailed and beautifully coloured examples to crude working drawings. These maps were intended as functional documents showing only the owner’s properties to the exclusion of unnecessary detail. These maps were usually commissioned by landowners and were created for their private use by commercial surveyors.

The earliest example is the survey of the manors of Crickhowel and Tretower (1587). From about the mid nineteenth century, maps became simpler and were increasingly based on readily available large-scale mapping in the form of tithe maps and Ordnance Survey maps, thus eliminating the need for costly private surveys. Estate maps were often once part of larger bodies of documents, many of which are held by the Library.

Estate maps often provide topographical information on features which were overlooked or simply not included by the compilers of later maps. They may be accompanied by a book of reference, or more usually a summary terrier on the map itself, detailing acreages and land use and naming tenants and fields.

A selection of digitised estate maps of Wales

Badminton Estate (Survey of the Manors of Crickhowell and Tretower, 1587, an early survey of a whole estate)

Reference: Badminton Volume 3

‘This noble survey taken of the seignoye of Chrughoel and Tretowre’, Volume 3 of the Badminton collection is one of our most important estate map volumes. Produced in 1587, it contains the survey of the Manors of Crickhowell and Tretower. It is one of the earliest surveys produced in Britain of a whole estate, carried out at a single scale, using a single style and method. It is also interesting as several later manuscript copies were produced in the 18th & 19th centuries.

Related links

Gogerddan Estate (An insight into the development and eventual decay of a landed estate in North Ceredigion)

Reference: Pre 19th century maps and Vols. 36-40 & 113

The National Library of Wales acquired the Gogerddan collection in 1949, and it provides a fascinating insight into the development and eventual decay of a landed estate in Wales. Much of the estate’s land was located in North Ceredigion, but there were also lands held near Machynlleth and further afield.

The main estate was based just outside Aberystwyth near the village of Penrhyn-coch. The mansion and other estate buildings now house the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, part of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

In addition to individual, pre-19th century, maps, the National Library of Wales has also digitised a number of volumes containing complete surveys of parts of the estate.

Gogerddan Estate Pre-19th century loose maps

Other Gogerddan Estate maps

Crosswood Estate (12 maps showing lands of the Crosswood Estate)

These maps originally formed part of the records of the Crosswood (Trawscoed) Estate owned by the Vaughan Family, later Earls of Lisburne. Most of the maps show lands within Ceredigion, including the Crosswood demesne itself. In 1947, the mansion together with the surrounding park, was handed over to the Welsh Agricultural Advisory Service. The Estate Records were deposited by the Earl of Lisburne between 1923 and 1964.