This thesis considers the making and circulation of drawn and printed imagery in Britain over the period 1610-1750 with a particular emphasis on the observation and record of place. It takes as its focus the contested position of the visual image in Britain over this period, considering the place of the record of the land, past, present and future, in the making and re-making of the country. It is particularly concerned to elucidate links between different forms of depictive practice: ‘pictorial’ and ‘mathematical’, evident at the time of their making, if often lost in their interpretation in the modern literature. These depictive traditions are explored in order to examine the value of the categories of ‘real’ and ‘ideal’ that have tended to dominate narratives of landscape history. Throughout, drawings and prints are considered as forms of knowledge that combined a number of traditions and practices, aged along with those more recent. Tensions between theories and practices of image-making are central rather than incidental to the study, discovered through an examination of manuals and treatises as well as drawings and prints. There is also a recognition of the importance of collecting practices and patronage over this period, explored through the extended legacies of Lord Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. A focus on collections and the legacies of landscape imagery has necessitated that images be brought together from a wide range of regional and metropolitan libraries, archives and art galleries, and reconnected with the wider cultural, political and religious worlds through which they were circulated and enacted at the time of their making. Drawing on a number of disciplinary traditions, this approach offers a new perspective on topographically-informed imagery over this extended period, seeking to expand the parameters of the interpretation of such works.