Description
Across the top runs a sweeping panorama of Windsor, with a ribbon naming the town and a detailed prospect of Windsor Castle and its environs. At centre is a richly worked strapwork title cartouche bearing St George’s cross, flanked by cherubs and complemented by coats of arms in the corners. A side panel records the Earls of Berkshire, underlining the map’s antiquarian connection and its interest in functional detail as well as landscape features.
The county is shown within its historical neighbours Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey, and Middlesex while within the boundary the coloured divisions mark the hundreds, the administrative districts of the period. Settlements are depicted with spires and roundels and feature profusely, from Reading, Abingdon, and Newbury to Hungerford and many smaller villages. Wooded tracts appear as neat clusters of trees, hills as the characteristic “molehills”. The lower right edge contains a particularly attractive compass rose while to the left an attractively framed scale of miles is featured.
Speed’s county maps were the first widely available, consistently designed survey collection of England and Wales, combining remarkably accurate cartography for the period with added historical notes and theatrical embellishment such as town views, costumes, and heraldry. This vintage map of Berkshire exemplifies this combination of geography and early print art, celebrating Windsor and the county’s noble associations while offering a remarkably detailed portrait of the landscape as it was in the early Stuart age.
