Old Map of Lancashire in 1611 by John Speed - Manchester, Liverpool, Preston, Blackburn, Burnley, Windermere

An oddity of the historic county of Lancashire is that its boundary once reached north across Morecambe Bay to take in a detached block of the Lake District, and John Speed's 1611 map, engraved in Amsterdam by Jodocus Hondius for his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, shows the county in exactly that older, larger form, complete with Windermere and the fells around it as part of what was then known as Lancashire over the Sands. That northern exclave, the Furness district, would remain part of the county for more than three and a half centuries before local government reforms transferred it to Cumbria in 1974.

Closer to the centre of the map, Manchester and Liverpool appear as modest market and port towns, still generations away from the industrial and mercantile growth that would make them two of the largest cities in the country, while Preston, Blackburn and Burnley are marked as smaller settlements along the rivers that would later power the county's cotton mills. As with Speed's other county maps, the sheet carries decorative hundred divisions, a coat of arms and an inset town plan, features that made his atlas the first English attempt to map every county to a consistent standard rather than as isolated regional surveys.

Seeing Lancashire's now-separated Lake District corner still attached to the county gives this print a genuine before-and-after quality that later, more familiar county maps lack, and makes a memorable gift for Mancunians, Liverpudlians or Lake District regulars alike. It is printed unframed at high resolution and available in our full range of sizes.