Old Map of Hampshire in 1665 by Joan Blaeu - Winchester, Portsmouth, Southampton, Basingstoke

Joan Blaeu's Amsterdam workshop engraved this map of Hampshire for inclusion in the Atlas Novus, the great multi-volume survey of the world's countries that made the Blaeu name famous across seventeenth-century Europe. Hand-coloured in the workshop tradition established by his father Willem, the map renders Hampshire's coastline, rivers and towns in fine engraved line work, bordered by a decorative cartouche and scale bar typical of Dutch cartography at its peak.

Winchester sits toward the centre of the map, marked as the ancient capital of Wessex and seat of a cathedral whose core dated back to the Norman rebuilding of the eleventh century. Along the coast, Portsmouth appears as a fortified harbour town, already home to a royal dockyard that had supplied the English navy since the Tudor period, while Southampton is shown as a walled port on its own estuary, long used for trade with France and the Channel Islands. Inland, Basingstoke marks the county's northern reaches, with Farnborough close by, and Havant sits near the Hampshire and Sussex border toward the coast. Rivers such as the Test and Itchen are traced in fine detail, alongside the many small parishes that made up the county's rural interior.

A fitting retirement gift for anyone who served at Portsmouth, or a thoughtful housewarming present for a family with Hampshire roots, this print also suits anyone with an appreciation of detailed seventeenth-century engraving. It is reproduced at high resolution and available unframed in a range of sizes, ready to hang in a study, hallway or living room.