Old Map of Manchester in 1793 by Charles Laurent - Salford, Ancoats, Ardwick, River Irwell, River Medlock

Two survey projects were racing to map Manchester in the early 1790s, and Charles Laurent's reached print first. William Green had been carrying out a meticulous large-scale survey of the town since 1787, but Laurent gained access to Green's working data and rushed out this smaller-scale plan, engraved by John Cary and published on 9 December 1793, well before Green's own map was ready. The plates later passed to the publisher Thomas Stockdale, who folded the map into John Aikin's 1795 survey of the country around Manchester.

Salford sits across the River Irwell from Manchester proper, already a distinct settlement joined to its larger neighbour by bridges rather than continuous streets. Ancoats, still largely open ground at this date, appears just before the cotton mills and canal wharves that would define it within a generation. Ardwick, to the south-east, retained something of a genteel character around its green, a world away from the industrial township Manchester was fast becoming. The River Medlock threads through the southern part of the plan, one of the watercourses that powered the town's earliest mills alongside the Irwell.

Collectors of Manchester and Salford local history, and anyone interested in the town on the eve of its transformation into an industrial giant, will find this a genuinely useful record and a fitting gift for a Manc marking a house move or milestone birthday. The print comes from a high-resolution scan of the 1793 original, unframed and available across our standard size range.