Exhibition of Tudor maps at the Mary Rose museum

Could a 500 year old map have contained clues to where the wreck of the Mary Rose lay and could this be the first time Portsmouth maps have returned to the city in over 400 years? All these fascinating questions will be raised in a brand new temporary exhibition of international cartographic importance, in the Mary Rose Museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard from 2nd July to 17th October 2010.

Mapping Portsmouth’s Tudor Past brings together, for the first time, several important maps from The British Library, UK Hydrographic Office and the Admiralty Library. All but one of these maps are hand-drawn and are works of art in their own right. Together they give us a unique and fascinating insight into Tudor Portsmouth and the view of their world 500 years ago.

The Mary Rose Trust are delighted that the British Library are loaning 5 unique items for this exhibition including the centrepiece of the display, which will be two stunning large-scale maps of Tudor Portsmouth, one dating from 1545 (the year the Mary Rose sank defending the country from French invasion), which is the earliest scale map of an English town and one of the earliest in Europe, and the other dating from 1552, which was probably made for the visit of Edward VI to Portsmouth on the 9th August 1552.

The exhibition also includes two important maps of the Solent from the collection of William Cecil, Elizabeth I‘s Secretary of State. These maps were made to review the defences of Portsmouth Harbour, and highlight both fortifications and potential invasion beaches. The Brouscon tidal atlas of 1540, displayed with a tidal calculator recovered from the Mary Rose, will clearly demonstrate a sophisticated Tudor understanding of the tidal currents and timings around the British Isles.

Source from : http://tudorhistory.org


For more interesting topics related to archaeology, visit archaeology excavations.