Description
The maps on sheet 8 show the Bideford district as it was around 1840. The maps show buildings, roads (with turnpike roads and toll-gates distinguished), rivers and streams, field boundaries and cultivation, woodland, parkland, orchards, archaeological features, historic parish and hundred boundaries, and a host of small features of the landscape. The maps include a considerable number of field-names.
A special feature of sheet 8 is the town map of Bideford in 1842, which is based mainly on a map made in that year by John Wood. Although Bideford’s heyday as a port was in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when the Newfoundland fisheries and American tobacco trade were at their height, it was still a prosperous port in the nineteenth century, the most direct evidence on the map being the series of shipbuilding yards and wharfs on the banks of the River Torridge.
The maps are printed on a large sheet of quality paper. The sheet is folded to A4 size and comes with a protective sleeve of archive-quality polyester.
The Devon in 1840 series is for anyone who has an interest in the historical landscape. If your Victorian ancestors lived in Devon, you will find no more detailed picture of the locality in which they lived. Local historians and archaeologists will use these maps alongside original documents, and will appreciate the place-name index and the Guide to Historical Sources included on each sheet.
