It’s thought that long established parishes are based on pre-Conquest manors. Some of them may even have had their boundaries established as early as the Iron Age. After the Conquest the manor became the basis of the feudal system, so that by the twelfth century the parish system extended across England. Over time larger manor and parishes were broken down to smaller units while others merged together. Even so, until the Reformation the parish was the basic administrative unit not only for the local lord but also for the Church.

In 1086 the Domesday book recorded manors but by 1188 it was parishes that formed the basis of Henry II’s Saladin Tithe which required the payment of a tax of 10% on all movable property and income – the only exception to this was that men in holy orders were not required to pay a tax on their books, vestments and horses. Rather than the local sheriff doing the job of assessing the amount t to be tax it fell to the local priest or bishop. If you decided to join the crusade to win back Jerusalem you were not required to pay the tithe. Oh yes and if you failed to pay you could be imprisoned or excommunicated which came with the threat of eternal damnation. Ultimately Henry II never went on crusade, it was his son Richard who joined the Third Crusade.

Aside from taxing folk, the manor/parish was also the smallest area for justice to be applied, often by the lord of the manor, at the manor court. By the sixteenth century the parish was an essential component in the relief of poverty not to mention the maintenance of roads.

Unfortunately rather than using maps in medieval England charters relied upon descriptions to detail tenure and grants. This means that Thomas Elham’s map of Thanet in his Historia Monasterii S Augustini Cantuariensis dating to about 1414 is sometimes described as the oldest surviving parish map. He used the map to illustrate the foundation myth of Minster in Thanet, a stretch of land given as wergild to Domne Eafe after the murder of her brothers by their cousin King Ecgberht of Kent. An article by D.W. Rollason explores the accuracy of the parish boundary with Elham’s map which also contains illustrations of the churches on Thanet at the time.

Of course once the sixteenth century arrived estate owners became much more proactive in the commissioning of estate maps. One reason is that the parish system which had been in place for so many years was disrupted by the Dissolution of the Monasteries and by various enclosure acts. Estate maps were created for their ease of use in legal and administrative use. Wealthy landowners were better able to overview their estates than they might have done through a chartulary which included charters and terriers, although a notable exception is the Boarstall Cartulary map dating to the fifteenth century which is the earliest known map depicting a village. Like Elmham’s map, the Boarstall Cartulary map also enshrines the semi-mythical origins of the landowner on its vellum.

And of course a map enable the landowner to enjoy sight of his, or occasionally her, domains at a glance.

Throughout the history of Christian England, from Anglo Saxon times onwards parishes were required to pay tithes to the church – one tenth of a parish’s produce was paid to the vicar, curate or abbey who owned the rights to the church. After the dissolution these tithes were sometimes paid to private landlords. Unsurprisingly people increasingly resented paying these tithes. In 1836 an act was passed allowing parishioners to pay cash rather than goods and an accurate series of maps were drawn up to identify all the land in a parish so that tithes could be calculated accurately. And, it was the landowners who were required to pay for the survey of their land. These maps are now in the National Archives at Kew.

Today parish maps are often created by local communities to identify the things that are valued and to celebrate what makes the community from its wildlife and history to its people and buildings. They are about a sense of place rather than created for legal or administrative reasons. Somewhat ironically they often share more in common with medieval maps than modern cartography in that there is often no scale, bird’s eye illustrations of rivers, roads and bridges and used and houses are often pictorial rather than represented by symbols.

A selection of modern parish maps can be found here: https://www.commonground.org.uk/parish-maps/

Pounds, N.J.G. A History of the English Parish: The Culture of Religion from Augustine to Victoria.