In 1560 Sir William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth's Principal Secretary and Privy Councillor (Fig. 1), transferred his London residence from Cannon's Row at the hub of the court at Whitehall to the golden three-quarter mile of the Strand. Straight away he named the property ‘Cecil House’ and it became his principal household residence during the law terms, the most active periods of government business. There was no more prestigious location and the house was to remain his London headquarters throughout his career until he died there in 1598.

Estate maps can tell us many things about a house in a certain period. Although rare, pairs of estate maps can tell us even more. Perhaps the best-known examples are Ralph Treswell’s two maps of Sir Christopher Hatton’s Holdenby, dated 1580 and 1587. Although the house was largely completed by 1580, the courts and gardens were not; so the second map shows how the areas around the house were developed. The main purpose of the second map, however, was to record the creation of the new hunting park, celebrated in a joyous rendering of deer, rabbits and jaunty hunters with their falcons. While maps of parks were primarily executed in order to establish their legal boundaries, they can also be useful to architectural historians, for some include images of very important buildings (like Holdenby). John Thorpe’s view of Theobalds in 1611, often reproduced in connexion with that important house, is only a detail in a much larger map of Cheshunt Park.