Mair maps - Ulster and Virginia

I love maps. When I was a wee lad I was very frustrated that the hardback atlas my parents bought me had a different country on every page, and the overview of each continent was tiny (having been squeezed onto one page). So I begged my mother to buy packet after packet of greaseproof paper sheets from Frankie Caughey's shop in Ballyhalbert. I then set about tracing each country very carefully, marking the main cities. I went through loads of pencils, and there were sharpenings in my bedroom carpet fibres for years afterwards. When I had completed Europe, feeling all pleased with myself, I tried to join the countries all up on the bedroom wall. I was devastated to find that the atlas had printed them all at different scales!

The two maps below date from the late 1500s / early 1600s, the era when Britain sailed West, first to Ulster and then to Virginia. Unsurprisingly, the cartographic style is similar - two distant frontiers, far from civilisation! To find out more about the historic connections between the two places, visit UlsterVirginia.com.

Virginia:


Ulster (Down and Antrim, sideways, with Scotland in the corner)