Old Map of Yorkshire in 1844 by Samuel Lewis - Leeds, Sheffield, York

This 1844 map of Yorkshire was produced by Samuel Lewis as part of the same nationwide series of county surveys that accompanied his Topographical Dictionary of England, a reference work aiming to document every English parish alongside a short written history. Given the sheer size of historic Yorkshire, the largest county in England, Lewis's map had to compress an unusually dense record of towns, cities and villages onto a single sheet, tracing the boundaries between its three historic Ridings as well as the roads and rivers linking them. The map arrives at a pivotal moment in the county's history, drawn just as its West Riding towns were being transformed by textile manufacture and its ancient cathedral city in the north was still some distance from the industrial expansion reshaping the rest of the county.

Leeds appears as a rapidly growing centre on the map, having expanded from a small manorial borough first recorded in the 13th century on the banks of the River Aire into a major hub for the production and trading of wool by 1844. Sheffield, whose origins trace to a small village clustered around Sheffield Castle at the meeting of the rivers Don and Sheaf as early as the 8th century, was by this date deep into the industrial growth that would make it central to England's steel trade. Bradford, a Middle Ages settlement, had by the 1840s become an international centre of textile manufacture, particularly wool, growing at a pace that outstripped many older Yorkshire towns. Kingston upon Hull, founded in the 12th century by Edward I at the mouth of the River Hull where it meets the Humber, appears on the map as an established port, having served over the centuries as a market town, a military supply base and a trading hub. York itself, founded by the Romans in 71 AD as Eboracum on the River Ouse and once capital of the province of Britannia Inferior, sits at the map's centre, alongside Wakefield, chartered in 1203 and once the historic capital of the West Riding, and Doncaster, built on the site of the Roman fort of Danum beside the River Don.

This is a natural gift for anyone with Yorkshire roots who takes pride in the county's industrial and Roman-era history alike, whether they grew up near Sheffield's steelworks or York's cathedral quarter. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, suiting anything from a small landing to a large office wall. Choose it for a Yorkshire-born relative marking a big birthday, or for anyone who simply considers themselves a Yorkshire person through and through: this 1844 Lewis edition captures the county's towns just as the Industrial Revolution was beginning to remake them.