Vintage Map of Derbyshire by Joan Blaeu, 1645

Derbyshire on Joan Blaeu’s 1645 Map

Joan Blaeu published this map in Amsterdam in 1645 under the title Darbiensis Comitatus, Vernacule Darbie Shire. The title can be understood as “The County of Derby, commonly called Derbyshire.”

The map formed part of Le Théâtre du Monde ou Nouvel Atlas, Quatriesme Partie, the French-language fourth volume of Blaeu’s expanding atlas. Contemporary catalogue records identify 1645 as the first edition of the plate. Later impressions appeared in other language editions and eventually in Blaeu’s much larger Atlas Maior.

Blaeu’s English county maps were not based on a new survey conducted by his Amsterdam workshop. Their geography drew substantially upon earlier English cartography, including the county maps associated with Christopher Saxton and John Speed. Blaeu presented this inherited geographical information through newly engraved plates, elaborate lettering, heraldry and decorative cartouches.

The map names Derby as the county town, together with such established centres as Chesterfield, Bakewell, Buxton, Ashbourne and Wirksworth. Numerous villages and smaller settlements also appear. Rivers, including the Derwent and Dove, help organise the geography, while groups of pictorial hills indicate higher ground.

These hill symbols should not be read as accurate representations of individual peaks or modern contour mapping. The northern part of Derbyshire contained the upland landscape now associated with the Peak District, but that name did not carry its present National Park meaning in 1645. The Peak District National Park was created only in the twentieth century.

Derbyshire was historically divided into administrative areas usually known as hundreds or wapentakes. These included High Peak, Scarsdale, Wirksworth, Appletree, Morleyston and Litchurch, and Repton and Gresley. They provide useful historical context, but Blaeu’s engraving should not be described as clearly surveying or outlining their individual boundaries.

Lead mining had been practised in Derbyshire for many centuries before the publication of the map. Mining communities around Wirksworth and the High Peak operated under distinctive local customs, with disputes and regulations handled through Barmote Courts. These courts were well established by the fifteenth century. Blaeu’s map identifies settlements within the mining districts, but it is not a mineral survey and does not mark individual mines or veins.

The map’s decorative treatment is as important as its geography. Six family coats of arms are catalogued, two of which were left blank. Its title cartouche is accompanied by rustic figures and cattle, creating a pastoral image of the county. Such decoration was characteristic of Blaeu’s atlas publishing and should not be interpreted as a literal record of particular Derbyshire occupations.

Although places associated today with great houses and natural attractions may be located on the map, Blaeu does not provide detailed architectural views of Chatsworth, Hardwick Hall, Haddon Hall or Bolsover Castle. Nor does he illustrate the caverns and geological features later celebrated as the “Wonders of the Peak.” The engraving records settlements and general geography rather than individual buildings or tourist attractions.

Published during the English Civil War, the map shows Derbyshire without battlefields, military movements or contemporary political boundaries. Its value lies instead in the way it presents the county to a seventeenth-century European atlas audience: a named landscape of towns, villages, rivers and uplands, framed by the decorative engraving for which Joan Blaeu’s maps remain admired.