Old Map of Cumberland by Robert Morden, 1695

About the map

Morden gives Cumberland a particularly striking maritime setting. Ships float in a broad expanse of open sea on the west, whereas the county itself becomes crowded with river valleys, lakes and miniature hill symbols. The contrast makes this print quite different from a flat, agricultural county map.

Map Details

• Original title: Cumber Land
• Cartographer: Robert Morden (c.1650–1703)
• First published: 1695, in Edmund Gibson’s edition of William Camden’s Britannia
• Area: Cumberland
• Places to locate: Carlisle, Cockermouth, Penrith and the Solway coast

What makes this engraving distinctive?

• The large scroll cartouche lettered Cumber Land appears to the upper left of the engraving.
• Small sailing ships enliven the waters marked The British Ocean, while the Solway coast and the border with Scotland frame the county.
• Pictorial hills, river courses, lakes and a series of distance scales distinguish the mountainous interior from its coastal approaches.

History

The Solway and the Anglo-Scottish border mattered enormously to the county’s identity. Carlisle, a fortified regional centre, stands among routes converging on the Eden valley. Travellers heading into the western valleys encountered an increasingly complicated landscape of lakes and fells; Morden indicates relief with conventional hill drawings, not measured contours. The relative sizes of towns and the small symbols for woodland help explain what a late Stuart reader expected to see on a county map.

Around the area

The printed words The British Ocean and the little vessels are more than decoration: they remind us of trade and communication along a coast facing Ireland and the Isle of Man. Inland, the shapes of river catchments and mountain groups let readers pick out the approaches towards Penrith and Cockermouth. The county is set between Scotland, Northumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire—an arrangement considerably older than modern Cumbria’s administrative boundaries. An interesting detail is the coexistence of several kinds of map information: elegant ornament, named settlements, natural barriers and practical scales. Looking at them together gives a more textured impression of seventeenth-century Cumberland than a modern road atlas could provide.

Made as a fine-art print: Archival pigment inks on subtly textured paper; supplied unframed and carefully packed. The historic boundaries and spellings reflect the cartographer’s era, not present-day administrative geography.

For the cartographer’s own descriptions of Britain, read our article Robert Morden’s Britain in 1693: The Mapmaker’s Own Words.