{"product_id":"old-map-of-sussex-surrey-in-1794-by-john-cary-brighton-dorking-lewes-east-grinstead-crawley","title":"Old Map of Sussex \u0026 Surrey in 1794 by John Cary - Brighton, Dorking, Lewes, East Grinstead, Crawley","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis double-county sheet of Sussex and Surrey was published in 1794 by the London cartographer John Cary, forming sheet 16 of his ambitious New Map of England and Wales, with Part of Scotland. Rather than working strictly county by county, Cary's series was laid out as a continuous sequence of sheets covering the whole of England and Wales, and this particular plate happens to fall across the boundary between Sussex and Surrey, bringing both counties together on the one printed page. That arrangement gives the sheet a slightly different character to a typical single-county map: instead of a tight portrait of one place, it reads more like a cross-section of southeast England, running from Surrey's wooded interior down to the Sussex coast. Cary was working at a moment when English county cartography was becoming markedly more precise, and the sheet reflects that discipline in its careful lettering and its attention to the towns, roads and parish boundaries that a traveller or landowner of the period would have needed to navigate this stretch of the country.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlong the Sussex side of the sheet, the map captures a coastline on the cusp of change. Brighton — recorded here under its older name, Brighthelmstone — was, by the late eighteenth century, becoming fashionable with wealthy visitors drawn by the new enthusiasm for sea bathing as a health cure, a trend that also brought early prosperity to nearby Bognor. Inland, the sheet takes in Lewes, the historic county town of East Sussex, and East Grinstead and Crawley, both then modest market towns on the routes running up toward London and Surrey. On the Surrey side, the map shows a landscape still dominated by woodland; Surrey was, and remains, one of England's most densely wooded counties, and the sheet marks numerous scattered stands of trees across the county rather than the open farmland typical of many neighbouring sheets. Dorking sits at the heart of this wooded country, close to Leith Hill, which the map records as the highest point in southeast England — a spot from which, on a clear day, the English Channel itself can be seen far to the south.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause this sheet was drawn as part of a national series rather than a set of separate county portraits, it has a value that a single-county map cannot quite match: it is the only one of our Surrey-related listings that shows Surrey and Sussex together on one continuous page, alongside our other Surrey maps by Cary (1801) and Samuel Lewis (1844) and the earlier John Speed depiction of Surrey from 1611, each of which treats Surrey on its own. For a family whose history straddles the two counties — perhaps generations who moved between Dorking and Lewes, or a childhood divided between the Surrey hills and the Sussex coast — this combined view says something a single-county map simply cannot. It also makes a fitting gift for anyone building a collection around the old coaching routes between London and the south coast, or marking a move to the Sussex-Surrey borderlands. Every print is supplied unframed, on its own or alongside your existing collection, and is available across our full range of sizes so it can be scaled to suit a hallway, a study or a larger feature wall.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TheMapVault","offers":[{"title":"16x20 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57825202340171,"sku":"1143-16x20","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A2 (42x60cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57825202372939,"sku":"1143-A2","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"18x24 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57825202405707,"sku":"1143-18x24","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"50x70 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57825202438475,"sku":"1143-50x70","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A1 (60x84cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57825202471243,"sku":"1143-A1","price":40.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"24x32 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57825202504011,"sku":"1143-24x32","price":40.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"70x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57825202536779,"sku":"1143-70x100","price":50.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"75x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57825202569547,"sku":"1143-75x100","price":50.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A0 (84x119cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":57825202602315,"sku":"1143-A0","price":55.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0907\/2456\/5323\/files\/SKU1143Mock004.jpg?v=1783695486","url":"https:\/\/www.themapvault.com\/products\/old-map-of-sussex-surrey-in-1794-by-john-cary-brighton-dorking-lewes-east-grinstead-crawley","provider":"TheMapVault","version":"1.0","type":"link"}