Early modern maps

Early maps can seem more like pictures to us today, as is the case with this colourful plan.

The Abbey is represented by its church at the bottom left, seemingly with lights on inside and door open. Red tiled roofs of buildings sing out. The River Thames swirls in blue, with wheels of watermills dipping into it, and a bridge on the right.

This was drawn in a cartulary – a volume where the abbey’s important documents were copied – as a record of a dispute about grazing rights, in case there were problems in future. Fields and meadows are named and their acreage given in Latin, which was the usual monastic language at that date.

Maps like this can give a vivid picture of what places used to look like.

This one shows castles and commons in a valley on the south coast of Wales. Note that ‘North’ is written on the right – it was not always at the top of a map at that date.

Ewenny Priory on the right, marked ‘Wenye’, was practically demolished during the dissolution of the monasteries, so we know that the map was drawn before 1540.

Dunraven Castle is on the left, on the sea which is painted red. Ogmore Castle is just to the right above the centre. Villages are shown by groups of houses. The brown areas were commons used by villagers to graze their animals.

This map was made for a legal case in about 1550. It was apparently drawn to be examined by judges sitting around a table in the Court of Star Chamber at the Palace of Westminster.

Lands claimed by one party above the central stream are drawn ‘right side up’, while lands of the other party are drawn as if ‘upside down’. The result is that one can see the entire land in question in one eyeful, yet the lands claimed by each party in the case are clearly differentiated.

The map also shows Middleton Castle and houses in the town.

This is one of a series of maps from the State Papers Ireland, thought to have been drawn by Sir Josias Bodley and his team for the Commission of 1609 to colonise Ulster.

These maps were designed for presentation to King James I, and are brightly coloured, with decorative strapwork cartouches (the boxes for titles). An empty cartouche on each map was perhaps left for a series title for the survey, which the mapmaker ran out of time to create.

These are among the first maps to give a detailed view of the landscape of the province. This map shows place names, with churches and hills drawn in perspective, and denotes bog and woodland.