Old Map of Kent in 1724 by Herman Moll - Chatham, Gillingham, Dartford, Maidstone, Bromley, Tunbridge

Long before Trafalgar or the ironclads of the Victorian navy, the Royal Navy's fighting ships were built, repaired and laid up along the River Medway, and it is that maritime backbone of Kent that gives this 1724 map by Herman Moll its distinct character. Moll, a Dutch-born engraver who settled in London and became one of the leading commercial geographers of Queen Anne's and George I's reigns, issued this plate as part of a set of county maps of England and Wales, each one marking roads, distances between towns and points of local interest for the travelling reader rather than for decorative display alone.

Chatham anchors the map's most distinctive feature, its royal dockyard already more than a century and a half old by 1724 and one of the most important naval bases in the kingdom, with neighbouring Gillingham sharing in the trade and traffic that the dockyard generated along the Medway. Further along the same river, Maidstone appears as the county town, and Tunbridge marks the crossing point where the Medway could be forded or bridged on the route south. To the north, Dartford sits on the old Dover Road and the River Darent, close to the Thames, while Bromley lies on the principal route out of London into the Kentish countryside.

Readers drawn to naval history, to the story of the Chatham and Medway dockyards, or simply to the road-and-distance style of early Georgian county mapping will find this plate a fitting addition. It is reproduced at high resolution from an original 1724 engraving and available in multiple sizes. Few Kent maps put the Navy, rather than the county town, at the centre of the story.