Vintage Map of Durham by Joan Blaeu, 1645

The Bishopric of Durham in Joan Blaeu’s Atlas

Joan Blaeu first published this copper-engraved map in Amsterdam in 1645 as part of his expanding Atlas Novus. Its full title is Episcopatus Dunelmensis Vulgo The Bishoprike of Durham. Catalogued examples of the first edition measure approximately 38 by 50 centimetres within the engraved area.

Although the map is now generally described as a map of County Durham, Blaeu deliberately used the historic name “Bishopric of Durham”. For centuries, Durham had formed a County Palatine in which its bishops exercised extensive secular as well as ecclesiastical authority. Durham Castle served as the residence and stronghold of these Prince-Bishops, whose position developed from the county’s strategic importance near the Scottish border.

This history explains Blaeu’s title, but the engraving should not be interpreted as a detailed map of palatine law or episcopal property. Nor should the medieval autonomy associated with the Prince-Bishops be treated as an unchanged description of Durham’s government in 1645.

Reading the Seventeenth-Century Landscape

The engraving names a substantial number of settlements, from Durham, Darlington and Stockton to villages and smaller communities across the county. The Rivers Wear and Tees provide a recognisable framework, while pictorial hills convey the uplands in the west.

The traditional names of Durham’s four wards — Chester, Darlington, Easington and Stockton — appear on the map. However, Blaeu does not provide the kind of precisely surveyed administrative boundaries expected on a modern map.

Churches, towns, woodland and hills are represented using conventional map symbols. These should not be read as individually surveyed architectural views or exact records of every church, manor, wood and watermill. Durham itself is marked as an important settlement, but the map does not contain a detailed depiction of its cathedral, castle or river peninsula.

Blaeu was an atlas publisher rather than the field surveyor of this county. Like many seventeenth-century Dutch maps of England, the geographical content ultimately drew upon earlier English county mapping associated with Christopher Saxton and John Speed. Blaeu transformed that inherited information through skilled engraving, typography, colouring and decoration.

Heraldry, Ships and Pastoral Decoration

Across the top of the map are three elaborate heraldic compositions. Four sailing ships decorate the sea, while the lower-left scale is accompanied by a putto. In the lower-right corner, a shepherd and shepherdess stand beside sheep around the map’s title.

These features make the engraving especially decorative, but they should not be treated as evidence of particular shipping routes, mining industries or surveyed agricultural activity. The ships and pastoral figures belong primarily to the map’s visual design.

The cartouches are characteristic of seventeenth-century Dutch Baroque map decoration. Describing them as “neoclassical” would be historically inappropriate.

Durham in 1645

The map appeared while the First English Civil War was still being fought. The North East had experienced Royalist, Parliamentarian and Scottish military activity, and Royalist control of northern England had largely collapsed following the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644. Some Royalist estates in County Durham were being sequestered during 1645.

These events provide valuable context for the map’s publication date, but they are not depicted on the engraving. Blaeu’s map presents inherited geographical and administrative information rather than a military survey or documentary record of wartime Durham.