Old Map of Staffordshire by Robert Morden, 1695

About the map

The shape of Staffordshire tells much of its story. A slender northern reach runs towards the uplands, while the busier south contains a close grouping of historic towns. Morden records this before coal, ironmaking and the Potteries transformed how the county was understood.

Map Details

• Original title: Stafford Shire
• Cartographer: Robert Morden (c.1650–1703)
• First published: 1695, in Edmund Gibson’s edition of William Camden’s Britannia
• Area: Staffordshire
• Places to locate: Stafford, Lichfield, Tamworth and Wolverhampton

What makes this engraving distinctive?

• The cartouche at the upper left identifies Stafford Shire and its maker.
• The narrow northern part of the county opens into a broader southern landscape, bordered by Cheshire, Derbyshire, Shropshire and Warwickshire.
• The map distinguishes settlements with town symbols, and Lichfield is represented with a cathedral-city emblem; woodland and river courses fill the surrounding countryside.

History

Lichfield’s cathedral identity is emphasised on the engraving, in contrast to the more usual settlement symbols. Stafford occupies the county’s central communications network; Tamworth and Wolverhampton help orient the southern districts. The Trent and its tributaries provide a geographical thread, but the map is equally concerned with the distribution of woods, local settlements and administrative boundaries.

Around the area

Notice the contrast between the comparatively spacious northern half of the plate and the lettering crowded into its southern country. This makes the map particularly useful for seeing Staffordshire before the scale of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century industrial growth. To a seventeenth-century reader, the names of market towns, churches and rural estates were important geographical landmarks. The ornate titlepiece, with its subdued colour, adds an entirely different kind of information: the visual language of engraved atlas-making. Several adjoining counties are named outside the coloured boundary, encouraging the viewer to consider the roads and river valleys connecting Staffordshire to neighbouring regions. The print offers an absorbing historical reference for families and places associated with the modern county.

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.