The people behind the maps
Rural Maps is a small studio operating from a converted brick and flint barn on the South Downs of Hampshire. Every map is made by people who know what it is to work the land.
Anthony’s understanding of craftsmanship — what it means to make something at the level of the finest things ever made, and to make it now — came from a Wyoming neighbour and dear friend called Jim Wear. Jim was a leather craftsman who spent his life on the Wooden Shoe Ranch in the Laramie Valley. He made six-horse hitch harnesses and high-end gun cases for London best guns, at a level that could stand beside the finest examples from any era. His method was always the same: study the original at close quarters, understand how it was made, then work out how to make it to the same standard in the 21st century. He took that approach to harnesses that had dressed the British Royal carriages and the Budweiser Clydesdales. He took it to gun cases made for rifles that had cost more than most houses.
That is where Rural Maps came from. Study the finest maps made in the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries — their cartography, their lettering, their illustration, their sense of a place as a lived-in thing rather than a set of coordinates — and work out how to make something as close to that level as the commission allows — for the land as it is now.
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Anthony Pelly
FOUNDER
Anthony Pelly farms the Preshaw Estate in Hampshire, 1,300 acres held by his family for six generations and designated a National Heritage asset. Rural Maps grew out of his own experience: implementing a whole-estate landscape masterplan designed by Kim Wilkie, he found that no adequate map existed for what he was managing. He made one.
He has served as Project Manager at Heveningham Hall in Suffolk, implementing elements of Kim Wilkie's and Capability Brown's 1782 parkland design across 8,000 acres. He sits on the board of the Rural Business Group, consulting with government at 10 Downing Street on the future of rural enterprise; and has lectured on cartography at Stanford University, California. He has been featured on BBC Countryfile and in the Financial Times.
Anthony has degrees in design and architecture from colleges in the USA and UK and continues to split his time between both countries.
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Catherine
CARTOGRAPHER
Catherine works closely with clients to understand the specific requirements of each commission. She liaises with data providers, processes information as it comes in from the field, and works with Anthony to ensure every map captures the detail that only comes from deep engagement with a property. She has a particular interest in how mapping can support the long-term management of rural landscapes.
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Rachel
CARTOGRAPHER
Rachel divides her time between her London studio and the Rural Maps base in Hampshire. With a background in architecture and design, she uses CAD software alongside hand-drawing techniques to produce maps that are as precise as they are beautiful. She is a regular visitor to the map collections of the British Library, drawing on centuries of cartographic tradition to inform her work.
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Jonathan
ARTIST
Jonathan lives in West Wales, “somewhere by the river” surrounded by high wooded hills, ruined castles and wild moorland. Inspired by Victorian art, his work has a traditional feel, combining realism and a strong sense of narrative. His approach is highly individual with all the elements within - subject, flora and landscape - being treated with equal importance. His work is therefore, part portrait, part botanical and part landscape, an approach that places the subject within the context of habitat, time and place and gives added opportunity for narrative within the painting.
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Daphne
RESEARCH & WRITTEN CONTENT
A graduate of UC Berkeley, California, Daphne brings a background spanning academia, economics, fashion and family offices to her work at Rural Maps. She handles the research into family and property histories, the written content within maps, and the storytelling that transforms survey data into something a family will treasure for generations.
Daphne, Anthony and their children often attend international site visits together — particularly those involving extended research into family history — and has accompanied the team on commissions across the UK, the United States, Europe and beyond.
Our Studio
The team operates from a beautifully converted brick and flint barn set high on the South Downs, within a working farm. It is the right setting for this kind of work: practical, quiet, and surrounded by the landscape that informs every map we make.
We work closely with a network of GIS specialists, fine art printers, traditional framers and art logistics specialists to take each commission from first draft to finished, framed print — wherever in the world it is heading. With over 3,000,000 acres mapped and a record of zero returns or rejections, the work speaks for itself.
Confidentiality Statement
Many significant commissions do not appear in these pages. What a commission reveals about a property stays between Rural Maps and the client unless the client chooses otherwise. The following have agreed to be named: Raymond Harbert, Sedgefields Plantation, Alabama; J. Pepe Fanjul, Amistad Ranch, Florida; Ty Schultz, EV Ranch, Colorado.
The portfolio shown here is the visible fraction of a considerably larger body of work, over three million acres mapped across four continents since 2013. Rural Maps maintains a deliberately limited presence on social media.
Ongoing Relationship
Rural Maps commissions rarely end at delivery. Around a fifth of the studio's annual work is returning to maps already made — new land purchases, tree planting, new buildings, additional illustrations. The map grows with the property. On larger projects the relationship goes further still: Anthony has hunted over multiple seasons, ridden ranch country for weeks, been invited back long after the maps were hung.