Vintage Map of Cornwall by Joan Blaeu, 1645

Cornwall on Joan Blaeu’s 1645 Map

The original title of this map is Cornubia sive Cornwallia—“Cornubia, or Cornwall.” It was published in Amsterdam by Joan Blaeu in 1645 as part of the fourth volume of his expanding world atlas. Contemporary catalogue records identify it as the first edition of Blaeu’s separate county map of Cornwall.

Blaeu’s engraving gives particular prominence to Cornwall’s long coastline and western peninsula. Towns and settlements are named throughout the county, rivers are traced inland and higher ground is represented pictorially. Three sailing ships enliven the surrounding sea, while the title cartouche includes imagery associated with Cornwall’s fishing and mineral wealth.

The map is catalogued with twelve family coats of arms, three of which were left blank. These heraldic elements were decorative as well as historical, presenting Cornwall through the families and institutions associated with the county when the map was produced.

Its publication date places the map in the middle of the English Civil War. Cornwall was predominantly a Royalist stronghold, and Royalist forces had defeated a Parliamentarian army at the Battle of Stratton in 1643. Parliamentary forces advanced into Cornwall in 1646. Blaeu’s map does not document those military events, but its date gives it a direct connection with this turbulent period of Cornish history.

Tin working had shaped Cornwall’s economy for centuries before the map appeared. The decoration acknowledges that association, but the engraving is a county map rather than an industrial survey and does not identify individual mines. Cornwall’s great expansion in copper mining, deep mining and steam-powered pumping belonged chiefly to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Like other seventeenth-century county maps, Cornubia sive Cornwallia should be appreciated as both geographical evidence and decorative publishing. It shows how Cornwall was represented to an international atlas audience in 1645—not the county with modern surveying accuracy, but a beautifully engraved record of its settlements, landscape and regional identity.