Old Map of Wiltshire in 1801 by John Cary - Swindon, Salisbury, Marlborough, Stonehenge, Trowbridge

This map of Wiltshire was published in 1801 by John Cary, part of the same series of county surveys that established him as one of the foremost English cartographers of the Georgian era. Cary produced his county maps with a level of precision that was unusual for the time, aiming to give an accurate and legible record of each county's towns, roads and boundaries rather than the more decorative county maps of earlier generations. Wiltshire, in the southwest of England, is bordered by Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire and Gloucestershire, and this sheet sets the county out within that wider context, showing how its towns and roads connected to its neighbours. Published at the start of the nineteenth century, the map captures Wiltshire just before the changes brought by the canal age and, later, the railways began to alter the county's towns and trade routes. As with the rest of Cary's series, it was produced as a practical reference for travellers and landowners of the period, rather than purely as an ornamental piece.

Wiltshire is home to more prehistoric monuments than any other county in England, and Stonehenge, the most famous of them all, is marked on this sheet along with the wider landscape around it. The map also takes in Salisbury, seated beneath its well-known cathedral spire, and Marlborough, a long-established market town on the old route between London and Bath. Trowbridge and the growing cloth towns of west Wiltshire also appear, reflecting the county's importance to England's woollen trade at the time. Swindon, by contrast, was still a modest settlement in 1801, long before the railway works of the Victorian era transformed it into one of Wiltshire's largest towns. The map also records Wiltshire's distinctive chalk hill figures, the White Horses cut into the hillsides — one of which is said to date back more than 3,000 years and lies near Dragon Hill, described as the oldest chalk-cut hill figure in Britain. Together, these details make the sheet a detailed snapshot of a county defined as much by its ancient monuments as by its market towns.

This map suits a collector building a themed run of West Country counties, or simply putting together a set of maps that trace the ground around Stonehenge and the wider Wiltshire countryside. It would also make a fitting gift to mark a visit to Salisbury Cathedral or Stonehenge itself, to celebrate a wedding held in Marlborough or the surrounding villages, or for anyone with family ties to the cloth towns of west Wiltshire such as Trowbridge. Because Cary drew Wiltshire before Swindon's railway-era growth, it also gives Swindon residents an unusual chance to see their town as it stood well over two centuries ago, long before it became one of the county's largest settlements. As with every map in our collection, it is supplied unframed and available across our full range of sizes, so it can be scaled up as a striking centrepiece over a fireplace or kept modest for a study or hallway.