Wales

Wales has a cartographic history that reflects both its geographical distinctiveness and its complex political relationship with England. The mountainous terrain of the north and west — Snowdonia, the Cambrian Mountains, the Brecon Beacons — presented surveyors with challenges comparable to those of Alpine cartography, while the coal-bearing valleys of the south generated a tradition of industrial and economic mapping that has no parallel elsewhere in the British Isles. The antique maps of Wales in this collection span the full range of this varied cartographic tradition, from the earliest printed representations of the principality to the detailed county maps of the nineteenth century.

The earliest printed maps of Wales appear in the editions of Ptolemy’s Geographia published from the 1470s onwards, where Wales is represented as part of a broader map of Britain that conveys the general shape of the island without the detail necessary to distinguish Welsh geography with any precision. The first map devoted specifically to Wales was produced by Humphrey Lhuyd, a Welsh physician and antiquary, and published posthumously by Abraham Ortelius in 1573. Lhuyd’s map — the Cambriae Typus — was a remarkable achievement, conveying the basic structure of Welsh geography with a fidelity that reflected genuine local knowledge rather than the speculative cartography of earlier representations.

Christopher Saxton’s county atlas of England and Wales, published in 1579, included detailed maps of each of the Welsh counties that established the cartographic framework within which Welsh geography was represented for the next century and a half. Saxton’s maps of Anglesey, Caernarfonshire, Merionethshire and the other Welsh counties are works of considerable graphic quality, depicting the mountainous terrain with hill symbols that convey the general character of the upland landscape without attempting the precise representation of individual peaks. These maps were engraved and reprinted by successive atlas publishers — Speed, Blaeu, Jansson, Morden and others — establishing a tradition of Welsh county cartography that lasted until the Ordnance Survey transformed the accuracy of British mapping in the early nineteenth century.

John Speed’s county maps of Wales, published in his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611–1612), are among the most decorative of all Welsh antique maps. Speed added town plans, heraldic shields and figurative vignettes to the cartographic content inherited from Saxton, producing maps that appealed to a wide audience interested in the visual presentation of Welsh identity as well as in geographical information. The town plans included in Speed’s Welsh maps — some of the earliest printed plans of Welsh towns — are of particular historical value, documenting the urban geography of places that have been substantially transformed by subsequent development.

The industrial transformation of south Wales from the late eighteenth century onwards generated an entirely new tradition of Welsh cartography. The coal and iron industries of the Valleys, the copper smelting works of Swansea and the slate quarries of the north all attracted cartographic attention, and the maps produced in connection with these industries document the physical transformation of the Welsh landscape with a thoroughness that purely topographic mapping cannot provide.

For collectors of British cartography, antique maps of Wales offer material of distinctive character and genuine historical interest. The combination of dramatic upland geography, a distinct national identity expressed through language and cultural tradition, and the extraordinary industrial history of the south gives Welsh cartography an unusual breadth and depth that rewards serious collecting.