My ancestors and some of my closer family were ag. labs from long time past until late 20th century - including migrant labourers, seasonal labourers, permanent labourers in tied cottages who were evicted if they lost the job, shepherds, cowmen and a farm bailiff.
If you want detailed historical information about specific places in Nottinghamshire you'd do better to ask on the Nottinghamshire board.
Many historic maps are online. National Library of Scotland map library is one most of us use.
https://maps.nls.uk It has several ways of finding the right map. Easiest way for you may be to use Map Finder and enter name of a place e.g. Southwell then select one of the dated maps which appear on the right of the screen. I tried it with 6 inch Ordnance Survey map series. Earliest one in the collection for Southwell is 1880s. Southwell is split between 2 maps. It was then a town. It may have been smaller in 1840.
GENUKI is a website which has information about places + lists of resources for family historians + maps.
https://www.genuki.org.uk It's a volunteer site and some places have more information than others. An internet search for genuki and a place and county should find the relevant pages. Southwell's claims to fame are as the birthplace of Bramley apples and the boyhood home of Lord Byron. A chart shows population sizes at each census. Hiring fairs for servants were held in Southwell twice yearly in February and November. There were several big houses and halls mentioned on GENUKI.
Records of large estates are usually in county or other local archives. You need to know what you're looking for before you start looking e.g. name of estate or name of owner.
A land survey & valuation was carried out in England 1830s - 1850s for a local tax assessment called a tithe. Resulting records and maps are in National Archives and on The Genealogist website (subscription) and may be in some county archives. Tithe records on The Genealogist can be searched by surname.
You're making an incorrect assumption that only large estates employed servants and farm labourers. Work in all houses, gardens and on farms was labour-intensive.
Wages were low for servants and farm labourers - a few shillings per week, a few pounds a year.
People of modest means like my 4xGGM on 1841 census could afford to keep a servant (2 in her case). She lived in a terraced house in a respectable area of town; it had 4 or 5 rooms including living rooms and bedrooms and housed 9 people.
Servant was the most common female occupation in England in the 19th century. Vicars, doctors, solicitors would have 1 or more servants. A shopkeeper in my extended family had a female servant in 19thC. Shopkeeper's dad was a retired boilermaker (skilled working class), his sisters worked in cotton mills from a young age.
Large farms and estates employed many labourers, some permanent, some seasonal. Smaller farms would employ fewer or perhaps only seasonal labour. My farm bailiff began as a teenage migrant seasonal farm labourer from Ireland, working with a gang, following a tradition of migrant labour which had begun in the second decade of 19th century. His first settled job in England was for an innkeeper & farmer who employed only him. Later he worked on a bigger farm nearby where he became farm bailiff and lived in a farm cottage, one of a row on the farm, across the road from the hall where his boss lived. Eventually he moved into the hall farmhouse. His employer owned several farms, some of them smaller.
Browsing the census enumerator's book for 1851 which gave people's relationships to heads of households may give you an idea of the type of households with servants. Farmers gave information about acreage and number of employees on some census returns.
