Old Map of Staffordshire in 1844 by Samuel Lewis - Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Lichfield, Tamworth, Cannock Chase

Staffordshire packed an unusual range of industry and history into one county, and this map was bound into the atlas accompanying Samuel Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of England, a gazetteer that Lewis revised repeatedly through the 1830s and 1840s using corrections sent in by parish clergy and local officials across the country. By the time this 1844 edition appeared, the dictionary had become a standard reference for population, industry, churches and schools in every English parish, and the accompanying county maps gave subscribers a visual key to entries that ran to thousands of pages.

The map shows Wolverhampton and its neighbours on the edge of the Black Country, a district already transformed by coal, iron and metalworking trades by the 1840s, while Stoke-on-Trent and the surrounding Potteries towns appear as the centre of an industry that had made Staffordshire earthenware and china famous well beyond England, building on workshops Josiah Wedgwood had established in the previous century. Further north and east, Lichfield is marked with its three-spired cathedral, one of the few in England to keep all three original spires standing, and the birthplace of Samuel Johnson, while Tamworth appears as the one-time capital of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia. Cannock Chase, an expanse of heath and woodland that had served as a royal hunting ground since medieval times, sits between the industrial towns as open country largely untouched by the factories nearby.

That contrast between heavy industry and older rural England is part of what still makes Staffordshire county maps of this period rewarding to study, and a welcome gift for former Potteries or Black Country residents marking a house move or milestone birthday. This sheet is reproduced unframed at high resolution in a full range of sizes.