[Estate Survey Book.]

Notes

An attractive and carefully prepared record of the estates of the Duke of Somerset, created under the 11th Duke, Edward St Maur (1775-1855), a mathematician and astronomer. Updates and additions follow from the period of his first son and immediate heir, Edward Seymour (1804-1885), who married someone outside the nobility and outlived his sons, leading to a split in the family's inheritance.
The substantial notebook, the paper of which is watermarked 'FELLOWS / 1845' and a Britannia figure, has been almost entirely filled with charts listing the various properties, divided into their separate premises, and each one recorded with its size in arable land and pasture, and the rent payable, all on the verso of a leaf; the facing rectos are often blank but sometimes have updates, extensions, or calculations, and in a number of cases tidy hand-drawn maps of the lands showing the extent of the premises and their relation to roads and water features. A summary section at the front also lists the tenants (in pencil for easier updating).
The occasional references to length of leases and their start dates indicate that the bulk of the volume was compiled in or around 1848, and updates follow through the next decade or a bit more, including records of a number of sections of land sold for the building of railways in the 1850s: e.g. to Great Western Railway in 1853 and East Somerset Railway (later absorbed into GWR) in 1857.