Maps of Swale
Maps of Swale
Description: This is a map of the manors of Bayford and Goodmanston in Sittingbourne in Kent. It is by Christopher Saxton and dates from 1590. Saxton is perhaps most well known for his atlas of England and Wales, published in 1579 under the patronage of Elizabeth I. Christopher Saxton is first recorded in 1570 as an apprentice to John Rudd, Vicar of Dewsbury from 1554 to 1570,whose keen interest in cartography had seen him engaged in the 1550’s in making a platt’ of England. The period during which Saxton worked saw great advances in the field of cartography, particularly by the Dutch and Flemish. Saxton’s pioneering maps were made possible by advancements in draughtsmanship and surveying which emerged in part as a result of the practical needs of military engineers. By the 1540 military surveyors were well able to draft plans and topographical maps to scale. A large number of treatises on surveying appeared, responding to a desire to formalise land boundaries, military textbooks were published explaining the use of the cross-staff for surveying lengths and distances. These advances lead to the construction of increasingly sophisticated surveying instruments resulting in a new accuracy in mapping. Here a scale bar is includes, showing 64 perches to 4 inches. A perch is an old form of measurement equal to 16 and a half feet. Detail includes fields and houses, an orchard, roads and waterways. A cartouche encloses the acreages of lands within the manors. Orientation is given in the margins in Latin.
Creator: Saxton, Christopher
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