About the Volume

General Editor: Mary D. Lobel

Topographical Editor: W.H. Johns

From the volume's cover:

This atlas constitutes the second volume of Historic Towns, a monumental atlas that recreates and records the long-vanished urban Britain that existed before 1800. Each town in the series is closely surveyed and researched by cartographers and scholars, and then presented in a set of detailed large-scale maps accompanied by a long historical essay.

When it appeared in 1969 the first volume was hailed for its union of historical scholarship and revolutionary cartographic techniques. It shed exciting new light on the course of urban development, and provided the very first scientifically accurate maps of British towns during the centuries before industrialization. Banbury, Caernarvon, Glasgow, Gloucester, Hereford, Nottingham, Reading and Salisbury were the very varied subject of the first volume.

This second volume deals at length with four diverse but pre-eminent provincial cities: Bristol, Cambridge, Coventry, and Norwich. As in its predecessor, each is treated individually although the commentaries make it clear that none developed in geographical, political or economic isolation from the rest of Britain or indeed of Western Europe.