Old Map of Huntingdonshire in 1611 by Speed - Huntingdon, St Ives, St Neots

John Speed produced this map of Huntingdonshire in 1611, engraved by Jodocus Hondius and first published in Speed's Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, one of the earliest atlases to map the counties of England and Wales in a single coherent series. Huntingdonshire itself was, at the time, a separate historic county, and it has since been absorbed into what is now Cambridgeshire, which makes a map from this period a genuine record of a county boundary that no longer exists in administrative terms. Speed's atlas combined careful surveying with fine engraving, and this sheet reflects that approach, recording the towns and villages of Huntingdonshire as they stood at the very start of the seventeenth century, some under names that have since changed or fallen out of use.

Huntingdon itself, the historic county town, is shown along with St Ives and St Neots, two of the county's other principal market towns, as well as Godmanchester, sitting just across the river from Huntingdon, and Yaxley a little further south. Because the map predates so much of the development that followed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of these towns appear here in a form that a modern visitor would barely recognise, recorded in the fine, hand-engraved style typical of Speed's county atlas, where town names, county boundaries and the surrounding countryside were all set down with equal care. It remains a useful record for anyone tracing the early history of this corner of what is now Cambridgeshire, back to a time before the county of Huntingdonshire itself had reached its final, familiar shape.

This map would make a considered gift for anyone with family history in Huntingdon, St Ives, St Neots, Godmanchester or Yaxley, particularly if their roots go back further than the map itself, or for someone who has recently moved to this part of Cambridgeshire and wants a sense of how the area looked four centuries ago. It would equally suit a collector building a set of Speed's county maps, since this Huntingdonshire sheet is part of the same landmark atlas that first mapped England and Wales county by county. It is available unframed and in a full range of sizes, so it can be scaled to fit a hallway, a study or a larger wall.