County surveyor

Eventually, the military defence component of county surveying in the UK began to separate from the civil in 1791, with the Crown's 'Board of Ordnance' being commissioned to carry out a comprehensive survey of the South Coast of England[3] which, as a result of 'the last invasion of Britain 1797', at Fishguard in South West Wales[4] ultimately extended to all of the UK.

The UK equivalent of NACS, the County Surveyors' Society (CSS), founded in 1885,[8] was transformed into the pluralistic Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT) in 2010.

[9] The NACo website sets out its perception of the history of county government in the USA, tracing it to Anglo-Saxon England (initial division of land into holdings for government purposes called 'shires', hence 'shire-reeve', the origin of 'sheriff'), Anglo-Norman feudalism (renaming shires conquered by William I as 'counties' and establishing his allodial title to them via the Domesday Book survey), and the increasingly "plural executive structure" commissioned by his successors to the royal throne of England to defend the peace and enforce the complex of chivalric, common, and statutory laws of England (and of Wales from the reign of Edward I) up to the time of the first county government established in America (County of James City, Virginia).

[10] This triad of origins is fundamental to understanding the organisation role that county surveying plays in the administration and development of the real estate of many states and nations around the world, even though sometimes it goes by other names.

It was the framework that the King of England applied to his colonies in America and sufficiently successful as to have since been adopted by many other states.