{"product_id":"old-map-of-county-durham-in-1665-by-joan-blaeu-darlington-stockton-on-tees-sunderland-hartlepool-newcastle","title":"Old Map of County Durham in 1665 by Joan Blaeu - Darlington, Stockton-on-Tees, Sunderland, Hartlepool, Newcastle","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis map of County Durham was published in 1665 by the Amsterdam cartographer Joan Blaeu as part of his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Sive Atlas Novus, one of the great atlases to emerge from the Dutch Golden Age of mapmaking. Blaeu's workshop produced maps of a decorative quality rarely matched by English publishers of the period, using earlier English surveys as their base but engraving and hand-colouring them in Amsterdam with the ornamental cartouches and borders typical of Dutch atlas work. This sheet captures County Durham in the mid-17th century, a landscape still defined largely by its coalfields, market towns and the River Wear and River Tees, decades before industrial development would begin reshaping the county's towns.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSunderland appears on the map as a modest port at the mouth of the River Wear, its later reputation as a major shipbuilding and coal-exporting town still generations away. Hartlepool is shown as an old fishing town on the coast, its natural harbour already in use for centuries by this date. Darlington and Stockton-on-Tees both appear as market towns along the River Tees, long before the railway that would famously connect them in the following century. Newcastle, just across the county boundary on the Tyne, is recorded as the region's principal town and port, central to the coal trade that already dominated the North East's economy in the 17th century. Together these towns capture County Durham on the eve of the industrial transformation that would, within two centuries, make it one of England's great coal and shipbuilding regions.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis map is a fitting gift for anyone with family roots in Sunderland, Darlington or the wider North East, or for a collector drawn to the decorative Dutch cartography of the 17th century. County Durham buyers should note we also carry the county as mapped by John Speed in 1611: where that earlier Jacobean sheet was engraved in England more than fifty years before this one, this 1665 Blaeu edition reflects the later, continental style of Dutch cartography, making the two genuinely distinct portraits of the county rather than duplicates of one another. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a modest print to a larger statement piece.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TheMapVault","offers":[{"title":"16x20 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57829856510283,"sku":"1168-16x20","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A2 (42x60cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57829856543051,"sku":"1168-A2","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"18x24 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57829856575819,"sku":"1168-18x24","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"50x70 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57829856608587,"sku":"1168-50x70","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A1 (60x84cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57829856641355,"sku":"1168-A1","price":55.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"24x32 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57829856674123,"sku":"1168-24x32","price":55.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"70x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57829856706891,"sku":"1168-70x100","price":69.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"75x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57829856739659,"sku":"1168-75x100","price":69.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"A0 (84x119cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57829856772427,"sku":"1168-A0","price":76.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0907\/2456\/5323\/files\/SKU1168Mock004.jpg?v=1783701968","url":"https:\/\/www.themapvault.com\/en-us\/products\/old-map-of-county-durham-in-1665-by-joan-blaeu-darlington-stockton-on-tees-sunderland-hartlepool-newcastle","provider":"TheMapVault","version":"1.0","type":"link"}