Old Map of Derbyshire in 1844 by Lewis - Buxton, Ashbourne, Matlock

Samuel Lewis published this map of Derbyshire in 1844 as one of the county sheets accompanying his Topographical Dictionary of England, a reference work that eventually ran to fifty-seven maps covering the counties of England and Wales. Lewis compiled the dictionary and its atlas to record the towns, parishes and features of the country as they stood in the years just before the railway age reshaped much of Britain, and the Derbyshire sheet reflects that mid-nineteenth-century snapshot in detail, showing the county's major towns as they were laid out at the time, some under names or boundaries that have since changed. Because the map predates later Victorian and twentieth-century growth, several of Derbyshire's smaller settlements appear here much as they would have looked to a traveller of the 1840s, before industrial expansion and the railways altered the county further.

Derby, the county town, is marked along with its industrial character, and Chesterfield appears with the crooked spire that has long identified its parish church. Buxton is shown as a spa town known for its thermal springs and Georgian architecture, while Matlock sits within the Derbyshire Dales as another of the county's spa destinations. Ashbourne, on the southern edge of the Peak District, and Bakewell, close by Chatsworth House, both appear as established market towns, alongside Glossop near the Peak District, Alfreton, Swadlincote, Long Eaton on the River Trent, Ilkeston, Heanor and Staveley. Together these towns give the map a genuinely comprehensive spread across the county, from the industrial settlements of the south and east to the spa towns and dale villages of the Peak District to the north and west.

A map like this makes a considered gift for anyone with family roots in the Peak District, or for someone who grew up around Buxton, Matlock or Bakewell and has since moved away to another part of the country. It would also suit a Chatsworth House regular, a keen walker who knows the Derbyshire Dales well, a retiring GP or vicar who spent a career in one of these market towns, or a collector assembling Lewis's county maps one sheet at a time, since this Derbyshire map is one of fifty-seven in the original series covering England and Wales. It is available unframed and in a full range of sizes, so it can be chosen to fit a narrow hallway, a study or a larger sitting-room wall.