Old Map of Sussex in 1724 by Herman Moll - Worthing, Crawley, Brighton, Bognor, Eastbourne

This map of Sussex was produced around 1724 by Herman Moll, a Dutch-born cartographer who built his career in London and became one of the most prolific English mapmakers of the early 18th century. Moll's county maps were known for their dense, informative lettering and decorative flourishes, often paired with a short written description of the county's history and character. This Sussex sheet reflects more than a century of surveying progress since John Speed's pioneering county atlas of 1611, recording Sussex's roads, parishes and market towns with a level of detail typical of the early Georgian period, produced well before the railways and seaside tourism reshaped the county's coastline.

Brighton appears here still under its earlier form as a modest fishing settlement, decades before the fashion for sea bathing turned it into the resort town celebrated by the Prince Regent later in the century. Worthing and Bognor are similarly recorded as small coastal settlements, long before either developed into the seaside towns familiar today. Eastbourne appears as a scattered coastal parish rather than a resort, and Crawley, inland on the road toward London, is shown as a modest market town, more than two centuries before the New Town Act would transform it into one of Sussex's largest urban centres. Together these towns capture the Sussex coast at a moment just before its long transformation from farmland and fishing villages into England's seaside playground.

Sussex collectors should note we also carry the county as mapped by John Speed in 1611 and by Joan Blaeu in 1665, as well as John Cary's later 1801 edition: this 1724 Moll sheet sits between the earliest Jacobean surveys and the more industrial Georgian mapping that followed, a genuinely distinct snapshot of the county in its own right. This map makes a fitting gift for anyone with roots along the Sussex coast, or for a collector building a timeline of the same county across the centuries. 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.