Description
The name Camri first appears on maps in AD1050. Since then the Lake District and historic counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire have been mapped countless times.
Cumbria – 1,000 years of maps features more than 100 charts, surveys and maps from ten centuries of cartography, including:
– the earliest maps – when the world fitted onto a single sheet of A4,
– the first ‘county surveys’ – elaborate in detail, destined for gentry parlours,
– tourist maps – from Thomas West’s viewing stations to Alfred Wainwright’s ‘love letters to the fells’,
– historical maps – illustrative trips to the wad mines of Borrowdale and the first attempts to map Roman Britain,
– travel maps – recording the golden ages of canal, rail and road,
– maps of the Ordnance Survey – and the evolution of a military department into the best map-maker of its time.
From geological plots to nautical charts, audacious forgeries to postal itineraries, town surveys to military plans, Cumbria – 1,000 years of maps not only profiles the evolution of Cumbrian cartography, it also celebrates the rich social history of a much-loved landscape.
“William’s fascinating survey sweeps from the first map to mention Cumbria… to a modern map with a much deeper historical frame of reference… The danger with picking this book up is that further epochs will pass whilst you read.” Cumbria Life
About the author:
William D. Shannon specialises in aspects of landscape and agricultural history, with a particular passion for maps and their history. He is a vice president of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, a trustee of the Cumbria County History Trust, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Previous books include: Seventeenth-Century Lancashire Restored and Murus Ille Famosus, about the depiction of Hadrian’s Wall on early maps. William’s PhD was on the reclamation of lowland mosses in the north-west, and he has contributed to more than 40 academic papers.
