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This is Bacon’s Library Map of Yorkshire, published in London by G.W. Bacon & Co.
The map was reduced from the One Inch Ordnance Survey to half the scale, rendering a finely detailed representation at two miles to the inch. Bacon's folding map was likely intended for library or drawing-room use and exhibits the hallmarks of late Victorian cartographic production: clarity, precision, and functional elegance. It offers a comprehensive depiction of the historic county of Yorkshire, its divisions, railways, settlements, and political boundaries in the final decade of the nineteenth century.
Yorkshire—England’s largest historic county—is shown here subdivided into Parliamentary Divisions, colored according to their respective constituencies. These political boundaries, updated following the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, reflect the increasing administrative complexity of Britain during the late Victorian period, especially in urban centers experiencing rapid demographic growth due to industrialization.
The map’s rendering of transportation infrastructure is especially noteworthy. A dense network of railways traverses the county, linking the industrial centers of Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, and Hull to the broader national system. The rise of rail transport had transformed Yorkshire’s economy and settlement patterns by this period, and Bacon’s map gives priority to these arteries of commerce and mobility. Major roads are also clearly delineated, though rail remains the dominant feature of the late nineteenth-century landscape.
A prominent inset at lower left presents a detailed street-level Plan of Leeds, divided into wards such as West, Central, East, and South.
This map captures Yorkshire at a moment of transition, as its agrarian and medieval legacies were being reshaped by industrial capitalism and modern governance.
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