Old Map of Kent in 1665 by Joan Blaeu - Margate, Bromley, Canterbury, Maidstone, Tunbridge, Dartford
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What sets Joan Blaeu's map of Kent apart from the English county maps it was based on is the sheer decorative ambition of the Amsterdam workshop that produced it. Issued in Blaeu's Atlas Maior of 1662, with the well-known 1665 edition following soon after, the map reworked Christopher Saxton's late-sixteenth-century survey of Kent into an engraving dressed with a scrolled cartouche, coats of arms, and a compass rose typical of Dutch cartography's golden age. Blaeu had inherited his father Willem's publishing house and its stock of English plates, and his workshop's re-engraving preserved Saxton's geography while giving it a visual polish that English printers of the time rarely matched.
Along Kent's north-eastern coast, the map marks Margate, then still a modest fishing settlement on the Isle of Thanet rather than the seaside resort it would become, and traces the shoreline past Sandwich and Deal toward the mouth of the Thames estuary. Bromley appears among the wooded parishes closer to London, on the old road south from the capital. Further into the county, Blaeu also records Canterbury with its cathedral, Rochester on the Medway, and the market towns of Maidstone, Tunbridge, and Dartford, giving a full picture of Kent from the Thames shore down to the Weald. The Isle of Sheppey and the winding course of the River Medway are also clearly shown.
Because so many other Kent maps in circulation lead with the cathedral towns of the Weald, this edition offers something a little different for collectors who want the county's north coast and London-facing parishes given equal weight. It has been reproduced at high resolution from an original Atlas Maior plate, and is available across a range of print sizes for anyone building a set of historic Kent maps or simply tracing family ground near Margate or Bromley.
