A new way to visualise our land and estate records

Here at the History Centre we hold an excellent set of collections relating to the landed families and estates of East Yorkshire. Families represented within our holdings include the Sykes of Sledmere, the Hothams of Scorborough and South Dalton, and the Stapletons of Carlton Towers. The collections are large and varied, and contain records useful to all kinds of researchers.

Each family and estate collection has its own strengths and weaknesses, but what they all have in common is land records. Title deeds, leases, and manorial records appear throughout these families’ records, relating to villages and parishes all over East Yorkshire and further afield.

These records can be rather daunting for researchers, as the sheer number of them and the collections' complex catalogues can make them initially tricky to navigate. We wanted to make it easier to get an idea of the areas our collections cover and to be able to visualise which areas had more than one family’s interests represented. So, we used Google Maps to create a map showing the locations of records held in our ten largest family and estate collections.

The Family and Estates Collections map

You can browse the map, or search for a specific place. Clicking on a pin brings up a link to that series in the catalogue, so users can click straight through and view the items we have for that place in that collection.

Clicking on the pin for Sledmere brings up catalogue links on the left

Another interesting function of the map is that it gives a visual representation of how landed families’ property was distributed. For instance, we can see that the Sykes family’s property was concentrated in the East Yorkshire area:

while the Stapleton family held much less property in East Yorkshire, but more in North Yorkshire and up towards Newcastle:

The most far-flung properties are in the West Indies:

The purple pin on the right leads us to U DDCA2/46/1, a conveyance of a sugar plantation called Strawberry Hill, which was sold for 96,500 pieces of eight in 1795. 

The green pin on the left leads us to a series of records including U DDCV/198/1, a conveyance of plantations called Hampstead and Retreat, Mount Lebanon, and Coxheath or Lagoon Penn, along with 328 slaves, stock and implements.

Why not browse the map and see what you find? 

For more information about our family and estate collections, have a look at our research guide.