Press
Anthony Pelly and Rural Maps have been written about in the Financial Times, Country Life, The Field and Quest Magazine, featured on BBC One's Countryfile, and covered across the sporting and farming press. Anthony has also lectured on cartography at Stanford University.
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"Landowners have long documented their demesnes in finely drawn estate maps." Country Life named Rural Maps among the modern-day makers continuing the tradition.
‘Drawn to the Land’ Country Life - June 2026
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“These are maps unlike any I have seen before. The level of detail is breathtaking – from the inclusion of field names and shoot drives to the painstaking positioning of individual trees, they are not just geographically accurate but also serve as a personal memoir that the family can cherish for generations to come.”
Sporting Shooter ‘Where can I commission a decorative map of my property or estate?'
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“Maps commissioned by country estates are valuable historical records as well as being aesthetic objects.”
Financial Times ‘The art of hand drawn map making’
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“As featured on BBC Countryfile episode about traditional and contemporary rural craftmen”
BBC 1 - Countryfile
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“Pelly’s classical masterpieces visually tell a tale - preserving the culture and foundation of our ‘places’ ”
‘Maps to Treasure’ - Quest Magazine by Jonathan Young, former Editor-in-Chief of The Field. October 2025 Field & Country Issue.
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“Maps don’t just tell us where we are; they tell us who we are”
The Maps that Matter - The Field
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“Producing some of the finest bespoke maps today. They would look the part in shoot lodges, farm offices and drawing rooms across the world.”
Shooting Gazette Article ‘Rural Maps: Cartographers mapping out sporting estates’
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“Distilling data into maps & visual hierarchy.”
Stanford University, California USA - Guest Lecturer ‘From maps to meaning’
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“Rural Maps is one of those companies that truly epitomises all that Made in Britain has come to stand for”
Sporting Shooter ‘The Rural Maps team are combining beauty and functionality in the most extraordinary way’
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“Maps showing hidden farm hazards can help save lives”
Farmers Weekly article
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“Rural Maps is a map design company that creates maps including all of the detail a landowner needs.”
Meon Valley farmer's map firm charts a route to success | The News (portsmouth.co.uk)
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“Despite all this technology, the business is still firmly wedded in the countryside, with wellington boots on and mud on its feet”
Getting Creative with Connectivity - Rural Business Awards
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“Detailed maps are increasingly being produced for landowners who are concerned about employees working in remote locations in the event of an accident or other incident requiring support from the emergency services”
Directions Magazine June 2016
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“Top of the Tree”
Print Business ‘the printed map still has a role to play’
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“The result is a completely unique, incredibly detailed and visually stunning record of the shoot”
‘Immortalize your shoot’ Sporting Shooter
Country Life
June 2026
‘Drawn to the Land’
By Katharine Freeland
For its June 2026 issue, Country Life traced the long history of the English estate map, from the Elizabethan surveyors and the great 18th-century cartographers of Goodwood and Alnwick to the makers continuing the tradition today. Anthony Pelly was featured among them, on why landowners still commission hand-drawn maps in a digital age, the depth of knowledge a map can preserve, and his hope that one day a cartographer will be considered as essential to a significant estate as its gardener, architect and land agent.
Read the article in Country Life Online issue
Quest Magazine
October 2025
‘Maps to Treasure’
By Jonathan Young, former Editor-in-Chief of The Field
Jonathan Young was Editor-in-Chief of The Field for nearly three decades. His piece in the Field & Country issue of Quest covers the Rural Maps commission at Amistad Ranch, the 4,500-acre Florida sporting estate managed by Roy Green, formerly of Buccleuch Estates, and the broader tradition of bespoke estate and ranch mapping.
Read the article in Quest Magazine Online issue
The Field
August 2025
‘Maps That Matter’
By Janet Menzies
Janet Menzies traces the estate map from Tudor county surveys to the present day. Anthony and Rural Maps feature throughout: on capturing the names and knowledge only the people who work the land possess, on finding what an owner didn't know was there, and on the 1684 vellum estate map of Preshaw on the family's wall, the same boundaries and many of the same names still recognisable more than three centuries on.
Read the article in The Field
BBC One Countryfile
September 2017
‘Rame Peninsula’
BBC One.
Rural Maps featured on Countryfile, the UK's most-watched programme about the countryside. With many heritage crafts dying out, presenter Tom Heap went in search of traditional British makers, and Rural Maps featured as a contemporary rural craft, filmed in the studio in Hampshire.
Watch the programme on BBC iPlayer
Financial Times
April 2016
‘The Art of Hand-Drawn Map-Making’
By Emma Crichton-Miller
Emma Crichton-Miller explores bespoke estate and landscape map-making, placing Rural Maps among the finest contemporary practitioners. The piece traces rural cartography from the dissolution of the monasteries to the present, and asks why landowners still commission maps by hand. Sir Kenneth Carlisle of Wyken Hall, Suffolk, who hangs his Rural Maps commission beside an estate map from 1780, calls them important historical records.
Read the article in the Financial Times PDF of article
Sporting Gun
June 2022
‘Rural Maps — Making Memories’
Sporting Gun
Sporting Gun visits the studio in Hampshire to see how beauty and function combine in a commission, from the early work at Gusbourne vineyard to large-format decorative maps for sporting properties across Florida, Portugal and Scotland.
Read the article in Sporting Gun
Sporting Shooter
February 2019
‘Rural Maps’
By Emily Damment
Emily Damment examines three commissions: the Amistad Ranch map in Florida, nine feet by five with more than sixteen thousand individual trees and a hidden Labrador; a wild partridge shoot on a Portuguese estate; and a 5,000-acre Scottish grouse moor, its butts, bogs and ruins mapped in full.
Read the article in Sporting Shooter
Shooting Times (ShootingUK)
April 2015
‘Rural Maps: Cartographers Mapping Out Sporting Estates’
By Shooting Times
Shooting Times covers how a bespoke estate map serves as both a working management tool and a decorative object, and how it helps guns and keepers understand a property's drives, boundaries and ground.
Read the article in Shooting Times
Shooting Gazette
March 2015
‘Where Do You Think You Are?’
By John Walker
John Walker visits the Rural Maps studio in Hampshire to explore how bespoke estate and shoot maps are made — from the history of rural cartography to the practical value of a large-format map in the shoot lodge. The article covers the range of information a bespoke map can capture, from drive positions and peg numbers to field boundaries, woodland, water and areas of risk, and explains how a map can educate guns and keepers about hidden features and important landmarks across the shoot.
Read the article in Shooting Gazette
Farmers Weekly
June 2020
‘Maps Showing Hidden Farm Hazards Can Help Save Lives’
By Philip Clarke, Executive Editor, Farmers Weekly
Philip Clarke writes on the role of detailed farm maps in identifying buried pipes, drainage, electrical infrastructure and other hidden hazards, and how layered mapping makes the invisible visible, and the farm safer.
Read the article on Farmers Weekly PDF of article