Old Map of Glamorgan, Wales in 1611 by John Speed - Cardiff, Swansea, Bridgend, Port Talbot, Barry

John Speed was a tailor by trade before he turned to cartography, and by 1611 his atlas The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine had made him the best-known English mapmaker of his generation. His map of Glamorgan, engraved for that atlas and first published in 1611, follows the format Speed used across his English and Welsh counties: an inset town plan, a decorative cartouche naming the county's lords, and small figures in local dress decorating the edges of the plate. Speed drew on the earlier county surveys of Christopher Saxton but added his own research and, in Glamorgan's case, an inset plan of Cardiff that ranks among the earliest printed town plans of any Welsh town.

The map covers the whole of Glamorgan, from Cardiff, shown both on the county map and in Speed's separate town inset, west along the coast to Swansea at the mouth of the River Tawe. Bridgend sits between the two on the River Ogmore, and the map's coverage extends to the ground around present-day Port Talbot and Barry, both of which grew into significant towns long after Speed's survey but lie within the area his map depicts. Inland, the map also takes in Neath, the upland setting of Merthyr Tydfil, the Vale of Glamorgan, and the Gower peninsula, with the River Taff traced down through Cardiff to the Bristol Channel.

Collectors of Speed's atlas maps, and anyone with family history in the Cardiff or Swansea areas, will find this one of the more visually rewarding Welsh county maps thanks to its Cardiff inset and decorative figures. The print is produced at high resolution to keep Speed's fine engraving legible at any scale, and it is offered in several sizes so it can anchor anything from a small study to a larger room.