{"product_id":"old-map-essex-1579-saxton-first","title":"Old Map of Essex in 1579 by Christopher Saxton - The First Map of Essex, Romford, Dagenham, Brentwood","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis sheet holds a genuinely unique place in the history of English cartography: it is the first printed map ever made of Essex as a standalone county, produced by Christopher Saxton for his 1579 atlas of England and Wales, which was itself the first county atlas of any nation ever published. Saxton undertook the survey work under the patronage of Thomas Seckford, with the backing of the Privy Council under Elizabeth I, who wanted accurate county-by-county maps for administration and defence at a time when England faced real threat of invasion. Before Saxton's Essex sheet appeared, no one had ever seen their county laid out in this way, and the map became the template that virtually every Essex map produced for the following century and more, including those by John Speed and Joan Blaeu, was ultimately traced from.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSaxton's survey plots Romford and Dagenham along the road running east out of London toward the coast, and Brentwood sitting on the higher ground of the old royal forest, all rendered in the sparse, elegant style of Elizabethan surveying with hills shown as small drawn mounds and woodland as clusters of trees rather than the elaborate ornament later Dutch engravers would add. Colchester, Chelmsford, and the Thames-side settlement that would eventually grow into Southend all appear too, alongside the River Lea marking the county's western boundary with Middlesex and the wide expanse of Epping Forest to the northwest of London.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause this is quite literally the first map of Essex ever printed, it holds particular significance for family historians tracing Essex ancestry back to the Tudor period, as well as serious collectors of English cartography who want an example of the map that started the entire tradition of English county mapping. It also simply rewards close looking, showing a landscape of scattered villages and royal forest centuries before Essex's twentieth-century new towns and commuter suburbs took shape. The image has been reproduced at high resolution from an original Saxton plate impression, and prints are available in a range of sizes to suit any room in the house.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TheMapVault","offers":[{"title":"16x20 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57796065231179,"sku":"1031-16x20","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A2 (42x60cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57796065263947,"sku":"1031-A2","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"18x24 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57796065296715,"sku":"1031-18x24","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"50x70 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57796065329483,"sku":"1031-50x70","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A1 (60x84cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57796065362251,"sku":"1031-A1","price":55.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"24x32 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57796065395019,"sku":"1031-24x32","price":55.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"70x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57796065427787,"sku":"1031-70x100","price":69.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"75x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57796065460555,"sku":"1031-75x100","price":69.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A0 (84x119cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57796065493323,"sku":"1031-A0","price":76.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0907\/2456\/5323\/files\/SKU1031Mock004.jpg?v=1783534622","url":"https:\/\/www.themapvault.com\/en-us\/products\/old-map-essex-1579-saxton-first","provider":"TheMapVault","version":"1.0","type":"link"}