Custom Illustrated Property Maps
A map of your estate, farm or ranch — drawn from the ground up, capturing how your land is actually run, named and lived in.
Every property has a story that no standard map records
Anthony Pelly and the Rural Maps studio create personalised illustrated maps of rural properties around the world — from great English estates and Scottish grouse moors to vast American ranches and historic Southern plantations. The work goes far beyond what any mapping data provider can supply, capturing the given names, the working detail and the personal history of a place in a single, extraordinary document.
Each commission begins with a conversation and ends, typically several months later, with a map that exists nowhere else in the world. In between, Anthony and his team spend time on the land: walking field boundaries, talking to keepers and farm managers, uncovering what was forgotten or never recorded.
What goes on the map
Our custom illustrated property maps combine precise cartography with rich, hand-drawn illustrations. Every map is meticulously created to ensure accuracy while showcasing the defining features of your land.
We highlight:
Field and woodland boundaries
Given names and sizes
Detailed land use
Buildings, access routes, and natural features
Hunting, shooting and fishing information
Forest and woodland types
Individual in-field trees and hedgerows
Ownership and property boundaries
Historic sites and archaeological records
Public and family cemeteries
Contour lines and topography
Table of field names, sizes, and total area
Illustrated details often include:
Personalised title block
Landscape views and vignettes
Buildings
Game scenes and wildlife illustrations
Family crest, coat of arms, or monogram
Illustrations
For maps featuring illustrations, our artist Jonathan Pointer works from photographs provided by you or taken by Anthony during site visits. Buildings, animals, game scenes, family crests and landscape vignettes are all drawn with reference to your property specifically — not from stock or generic imagery. The original drawings are sent to you on completion.
‘A map of your own land will receive more attention from your family and guests than almost any other object in the house — including pieces of fine art that may have cost considerably more. Unlike those, it has no resale value whatsoever. What it has instead is something rarer: it is the only object in the room that belongs entirely to you, and that cannot exist for anyone else.’
History and research
Our custom illustrated property, estate or land map designs are inspired by the elegance of 19th-century British estate maps. We incorporate traditional elements such as ornate cartouches, coats of arms, and decorative flourishes to create a timeless aesthetic.
Where a commission involves historical research, we work alongside archaeologists, local historians and archivists to surface what has been forgotten. At Sedgefields Plantation, Alabama, this meant 200 years of records researched in full alongside a local historian — including the Bullock County archives, held in the historian’s garage and unknown outside the county. Lost cemeteries, churches and Muscogee Creek trails were located. Nearly 100 vanished structures were recorded. 75,000 individual trees were surveyed. Raymond Harbert discovered facts about his own land that he had not known. The historian’s life work found the audience it deserved.
The condensed history of the property — divided by era — is typeset and embedded within the framed print itself as a formal written panel. The etymology of every named site is researched and recorded alongside it. The names on the map are not labels. Each one is a record of who was here.
Something hidden
Inspired by time spent on your land, Anthony hides small illustrations within the map — a family dog at the woodland’s edge, a figure from the history of the place, a private detail that only those who know the land will recognise. He does not say what they are, or where. They stay there for the family to find.
Printing
Every map is printed on heavyweight, archival-quality Giclée paper by a specialist fine art printer in London. Framing is arranged through Derek Tanous, one of Europe’s finest traditional framers, using 200-year-old wooden moulds. International shipping is managed by Momart, with full customs documentation and white-glove delivery wherever your property is located. Many clients commission additional framed copies for other homes, offices or boats.
Why people commission a map
People commission maps for different reasons. Three siblings in their thirties commissioned a map of their family’s Wiltshire estate at the moment their parents retired and the keys changed hands — the estate fixed at the point of transition. At an estate in Dorset, every member of the family is represented somewhere within the map — bird shooting in the woods, falconry, a polo match, the pet pigs snuffling about in the undergrowth. The family is still finding them. Raymond Harbert’s historian spent thirteen years writing the published history of Sedgefields. The map hangs in the hallway by the front door, beside the bar. Guests stand in front of it with an old fashioned in hand and pour over it. One sits on the coffee table. The other is on the wall.
“Maps commissioned by country estates are valuable historical records as well as being aesthetic objects”
“Producing some of the finest bespoke maps today. They would look the part in shoot lodges, farm offices and drawing rooms across the world.”
Discover the process
To learn more about how a commission works, visit the process page.
Contact us
If you are looking to commission a custom illustrated property map, we would be delighted to work with you.
Contact us today to request a bespoke proposal, receive a quote, or ask for a physical sample draft to be posted to you. We will guide you through the process and create a map that truly reflects your property.
Frequently Asked Questions
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It begins with a conversation about your property and what you’d like the map to capture. Anthony will discuss scope, likely site visit requirements, and a rough timeline. Most decorative commissions take between four and nine months from first discussion to delivered print.
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Yes — for almost all decorative commissions. The site visit is where most of the real work happens: walking boundaries, talking to the people who know the land, finding what the data providers don’t know. For larger properties this may mean multiple visits across more than one season.
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The survey work is largely Anthony’s own. What he asks of you is your knowledge: time walking the land together, access to records and memories, and the chance to talk to the people — keepers, managers, farm hands — who know the property best. Either way, the land gives up its secrets.
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Most clients don’t. There are two options. The first is to commission now and update later — around a fifth of the studio’s annual work is returning to maps already made, adding new woodland, new buildings and new illustrations as the property evolves. The second is to map the finished vision rather than the current state. At a Wiltshire estate, an extensive parkland design still under construction was mapped complete — giving the client a permanent record of what the estate will become. Being mid-project is never a reason to wait.
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Yes — for commissions involving significant historical depth. The condensed history of the property, divided by era, is typeset and embedded within the framed print as a formal written panel. The history does not exist separately from the map. It is part of the object.
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Item descSurvey work is conducted using handheld GPS equipment, typically accurate to within a few feet. At the scales at which these maps are produced — usually between 1:5,000 and 1:22,000 — that is entirely adequate. A few feet on the ground is invisible at map scale. What matters is comprehensive coverage: walking every boundary, driving every track, finding every feature that no satellite image or Ordnance Survey sheet has recorded. This is not engineering survey work with theodolites and total stations. It is thorough, intelligent ground-level observation by someone who knows what a map of this kind needs to contain.ription
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Yes. Returning to maps already made is a regular part of the studio’s work: new land purchases, additional tree planting, new buildings, updated illustrations. The map is a living document and can be reprinted as the property evolves.
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Yes — physical archaeological sites are identified, located and plotted at their precise positions, numbered with Roman numerals that link to a chronological timeline beside the border. Mesolithic, Roman, medieval and Victorian periods can all be represented on the same sheet as the working estate.
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Maps are printed in London and shipped worldwide. Momart handles custom crating, shipping, customs and white-glove delivery. Maps have been delivered to clients across the United States, Europe, Australia and South America.
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Studio maps — produced without a site visit — start from £10,000. Full commissions with a site visit start from £40,000. US and international commissions start from $45,000. Please see the pricing page or contact us to discuss your property.