Old Pictorial Map of Cambridge in 1948 by Lee - King's College, River Cam, Bridge of Sighs, Trinity College

Pictorial maps enjoyed a real vogue in Britain in the decades either side of the Second World War, sold as souvenirs and decorative pieces rather than as tools for navigation, drawn by illustrators who packed their sheets with charm, humour, and miniature drawings of local landmarks rather than strict scale accuracy. This 1948 map of Cambridge by the illustrator Lee sits squarely in that tradition, produced just a few years after the war as the university city returned to something like its normal rhythm of undergraduate life, and it presents the colleges and river not as a technical plan but as a lively illustrated portrait of the city.

King's College and its famous chapel anchor the historic college backs along the River Cam, where generations of students have taken to punts on summer afternoons, while the Bridge of Sighs at St John's College and Trinity College's Great Court, one of the largest enclosed courtyards in Europe, both feature as highlights an illustrator working in this style would naturally want to draw out. St John's itself, the Backs, and the winding line of the Cam through the city give the map its structure, while small pictorial vignettes scattered across the sheet pick out other landmarks of university and town life.

This kind of map appeals as much to anyone who studied at or simply loves Cambridge as it does to serious map collectors, since pictorial city maps like this one are now collected in their own right as examples of mid-century graphic design as much as cartography. It makes an easy, characterful choice for a Cambridge graduate's study or a college memento for a family member, and the print is reproduced at high resolution to keep Lee's linework crisp, offered in a range of sizes from small prints to larger statement pieces.