David Beaton Libri

This remarkable book is the first colour book on the maps of an English county ever to be published. And few subjects could be more fascinating, or reveal more of the changing character of Dorset during the last soo years. David Beaton's knowledge of the complex relationship between successive generations of cartographers, engravers, publishers, surveyors and printers, brings the story of British map-making vividly to life. He has also cast his net as widely as possible, drawing on national as well as local and private collections to include nearly 70 maps, many of them richly decorated, and half of which are illustrated in colour Dorset's earliest map is a bird's-eye view of the coast ordered by Henry VIII in 1539; its most recent is the village map of Pentridge commissioned to mark the millennium. Many are unique, others are extremely rare, such as Christopher Saxton's map of 1575. There are playing card maps, town plans, distance tables, strip roads, estate surveys, bird's-eye route views, miniature maps