Yorkshire East Riding

42x36 cm

FIRST MAP OF THE COUNTY TO SHOW LONGITUDE FROM LONDON. FIRST EDITION.

THE EAST RIDING of YORKSHIRE by Robert Morden
Sold by Abel Swale Awnsham and Iohn Churchill

This is the first series of maps to mark longitude in minutes of time from London (top border) as well as in degrees (bottom border). Minutes of time was useful during a period when time was not yet standardised across the country. For most counties longitude is based on the meridian of St. Paul's, London. For most maps in the series, but not the East and West Ridings of Yorkshire, they were the first folio county maps to show roads, Morden making use of the survey and strip road maps of John Ogilby published in his road book, also entitled Britannia, in 1675. Morden did not however, adopt John Ogilby's standardisation of measure for the mile at 1760 yards preferring the somewhat arbitrary method of including three scales according to varying local measurement, of 'Great', 'Middle' and 'Small' miles.
The work was republished in 1722, 1730, 1753 and, finally in 1772.  The plate was updated for the 1722 edition mostly with changes to place name spellings and was reworked for the 1753 edition due to wear on the plate.

Some light wrinkling to top paper edge but a very good clean example from the first edition of 1695. Fine later hand colour.