Welsh Journals

THE PRINTED MAPS OF BRECONSHIRE, 1578-1900 IN THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES A Descriptive List with a Tabular Index By M. GWYNETH LEWIS, F.L.A. Department of Prints, Drawings and Maps The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth THE earliest printed map of Breconshire is the work of Christopher Saxton (1542 or 1544-A1610) of Dunningley, Yorkshire. Between about 1570 and 1578 Saxton was commissioned by Thomas Seckford, a Master of Requests to the Queen, to make a survey of the counties of England and Wales, the survey was published in 1579 in the form of an atlas containing thirty-four maps, more than one county being included on some maps, e.g. of the Welsh counties-Anglesey with Caernarvon- shire, Denbighshire with Flintshire, Merioneth with Montgomeryshire and, as will be seen on the following list, Breconshire with the counties of Cardigan, Carmarthen and Radnor. Saxton, whose map formed the basis of county cartography for over a hundred years, was followed by John Speed (1552?-! 629), a native of Farndon in Cheshire who followed his father in the trade of tailoring and became a member of the Merchant Taylors Company in 1580. The making of maps, at first a leisure pastime for Speed, later became, with the study of antiquities, his chief interest. On discovering this, Sir Fulke Greville made him an allowance in order that he might be free to give his whole attention to the pursuit of history and cartography. Speed's maps were based mainly on Saxton's work with the addition of town plans and the boundaries and names of the hundreds, and were published in his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine which went through numerous editions from its first appearance in 1611. The seventeenth century, too, saw the publication of sumptuous atlases by the rival Dutch firms of Blaeu and Jansson both of whom produced finely engraved and highly decorative maps based on Speed's work. Copies of the atlases of both Dutch publishers are in the National Library of Wales, the map of Breconshire, however, is missing in Jansson's atlas.