In the second half of the 18th century, estate maps became popular mediums for Scottish landowners to physically and literally ‘unearth’ possible avenues for the socio-economic transformation of their estates. Surveyors had become rapidly professionalised in Scotland and offered their expertise to landowners seeking to commercialise their estates by building enclosures, increasing their rents, or maximising the productivity of their land. These changes were known as ‘improvements’, reflecting landowners’ entrenched belief that commercialising their estates would help achieve economic progress for the nation as a whole.
In 1772, surveyor William Morison was hired to survey the estate of Lochiel, one of the estates annexed by the British crown a few years earlier following the defeat of the final Jacobite rising of 1745-6. The government wanted to use this opportunity to forcefully ‘civilise’ the highlands, and so, in 1747, it forfeited 49 landed estates from the Jacobite proprietors.
Thirteen of these, all situated in the highlands and including Lochiel, were then permanently annexed by the British crown in 1752. The Annexed Estates, as they were known, occupied enormous tracts of lands and were composed of varied landscapes, from the estate of Perth, then considered part of the southern highlands, to Cromartie, in the north-west. A board of commissioners composed of Scottish literati, proprietors and members of the legal profession predominantly based in Edinburgh was appointed three years later to administer the estates. Commissioners included the prominant politician Andrew Fletcher, Lord Milton, Enlightenment philosopher Henry Home, Lord Kames, and the earl of Findlater, himself a largescale proprietor. The board was not only responsible for enforcing law and order in these supposedly lawless spaces, but also expected to ‘improve’ them by dramatically restructuring the highland socio-economic landscape. Nevertheless, annexation was a short-lived endeavour, and the estates were ultimately restored to their rightful owners or their heirs in 1784.
Mapping the annexed estates
The board of commissioners for the annexed estates has left a considerable archive behind minutely documenting their ‘improvement’ schemes. Kept in the National Records of Scotland, the papers also include several estate maps commissioned between 1755 and 1772. The commissioners possessed a high degree of ‘map consciousness’, the tendency to represent their knowledge and ideas in the form of maps. Immediately upon their appointment, the board hired surveyors to map nearly all the estates under their care,
