Old Map of England and Wales in 1844 by Lewis - London, Birmingham, Manchester

Samuel Lewis published this hand-coloured map of England and Wales, divided into counties, in 1844 as part of the atlas that accompanied his Topographical Dictionary of England, a reference work compiled to record the towns, parishes and administrative boundaries of the country in detail. The map was intended to serve a practical as well as a scholarly purpose, setting down the patchwork of county boundaries and transport routes that defined the nation just as the railway age was beginning to take hold, and it stands as one of fifty-seven maps in Lewis's wider atlas of England and Wales. The engraving itself was carried out with considerable technical skill, and the result is a map detailed enough to serve as both a reference document and a piece of period design in its own right.

County boundaries are marked clearly across the map, along with the national boundary separating England from Wales, while the rivers Thames, Severn, Mersey and Trent wind across the landscape as both natural boundaries and long-standing trade routes. The Irish Sea, the North Sea and the Bristol Channel border the coastline, which is picked out in detail down to individual bays and estuaries. London appears as the country's largest city, alongside the industrial centres of Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, and a further set of smaller but historically significant towns, including York, Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter, Cardiff and Swansea. Bridges, canals and the earliest railroads are also marked, reflecting the transport network as it stood in 1844, while hachures depict the relief of the mountains of Wales and the Pennines, with the Greenwich meridian marked as a reference line running through the map.

This map suits anyone researching family history across England and Wales rather than a single county, since it lays out the whole patchwork of counties, roads and railways in one sheet, as well as anyone with a general interest in how the country looked just before the railway network expanded fully across it. It would make a fitting gift for a retiring geography teacher, a genealogist starting a new research project, or a collector who already owns individual county sheets from Lewis's atlas and wants the national map that ties them all together. It is available unframed and in a full range of sizes, so it can be scaled to fit a study, an office or a larger sitting-room wall.