A beautifully coloured map of Northumberland, with inset maps of Berwick and Newcastle, and a side panel showing Roman antiquities. Hadrian’s Wall is visible, marked as “the Pictes Wall”.

John Speed (1552-1629) was the outstanding cartographer of his age. His ‘Theatre of Great Britain’ was the first atlas of the British Isles: Speed prepared the maps himself about two years before they were published. His maps and books dominated the seventeenth-century English market. The present map is taken from the 1627 English edition published by George Humble.