Old Map of Somerset in 1665 by Joan Blaeu - Bath, Bristol, Weston-super-Mare, Taunton, Yeovil

This map of Somerset was produced by the celebrated Amsterdam cartographer Joan Blaeu and published in 1665 as part of his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Sive Atlas Novus, one of the great atlases to come out of the Blaeu family workshop during the Dutch Golden Age of cartography. Blaeu's maps were prized for their fine engraving and rich hand-colouring, produced in Amsterdam using English surveys as their base but presented in a distinctly continental decorative style, complete with ornamental cartouches and borders unlike anything English publishers of the period were producing. This Somerset sheet offers a mid-17th-century view of the county, a genuinely scarce survival from an era when hand-coloured maps of this quality were produced in far smaller numbers than the mass-printed county atlases of later centuries.

Bath appears on the map already known for its hot springs, a spa town whose reputation stretched back to Roman times, long before the Georgian architecture that would later define it was built. Bristol is shown as one of England's most important ports, a major centre for trade with Ireland, Europe and, increasingly, the Atlantic. Taunton appears as the county town, a market centre at the heart of Somerset's agricultural trade, while Yeovil is recorded as a smaller market town, well before the glove-making industry that would come to define it in later centuries. Weston-super-Mare is marked here as little more than a coastal hamlet, well over a century before it grew into the seaside resort familiar today, and Portishead appears as a modest settlement on the Severn estuary.

This map is a fitting gift for anyone with family ties to Bath, Bristol or the Somerset market towns, or for a collector drawn to the decorative Dutch cartography of the 17th century. It suits a retirement move to the Somerset countryside just as well as a nod to family roots around Taunton or Yeovil. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger piece for a hallway or sitting room.