Cumbria - 1000 years of maps

The name Camri first appears on maps in AD1050. Since then the Lake District and historic counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire have been mapped countless times.

Cumbria – 1,000 years of maps features more than 100 charts, surveys and maps from ten centuries of cartography, including:

•   the earliest maps – when the world fitted onto a single sheet of A4,
•   the first ‘county surveys’ – elaborate in detail, destined for gentry parlours,
•   tourist maps – from Thomas West’s viewing stations to Alfred Wainwright’s ‘love letters to the fells’,
•   historical maps – illustrative trips to the wad mines of Borrowdale and the first attempts to map Roman Britain,
•   travel maps – recording the golden ages of canal, rail and road,
•   maps of the Ordnance Survey – and the evolution of a military department into the best map-maker of its time.

From geological plots to nautical charts, audacious forgeries to postal itineraries, town surveys to military plans, Cumbria – 1,000 years of maps not only profiles the evolution of Cumbrian cartography, it also celebrates the rich social history of a much-loved landscape.