Add MS 56070

MAP OF GUNTON, CO. SUFFOLK: a map of the manor showing Lowestoft and neighbourhood, apparently executed for use in a case between John Hoo, tenant of Lowestoft manor, and Robert Wroote, owner of the manor of Gunton (see below); [1579-1580]. Scale: highly irregular, Gunton itself being depicted on an approximate scale of 9 inches = 1 mile, the remainder of the coast being compressed on a much smaller scale. A panel on the top left-hand corner was intended for a title which was never added. Trees, buildings and other features are shown in profile, and are shaded to give an effect of a south light. The sea in the foreground is decorated with sailing vessels. Cotton MS. Augustus I. i.58, a chart of the Suffolk coast from Orwell Haven to Gorleston, that has been dated tentatively circa 1514 in Letters and papers . . . of the reign of Henry VIII, xxi, pt. 2, p. 456, shows a blockhouse and other fortifications at Lowestoft and Corton which are not shown on the present map. The case between Hoo and Wroote of 22 Eliz. I [1579-1580], concerned the ownership of Gunton Denes, and is related at length in A. I. Suckling, The History and Antiquities of the County of Suffolk, ii (1848), pp. 3-7. Suckling's account is based on documents then in the possession of Robert Reeve of Blundeston Hall and now in the Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office (HD 196: 1110/2/1-3). On the present map a number of annotations, some of which have been later erased, have been made in lighter ink by a second hand in secretary style in or around Gunton Denes and, in addition, the north and south boundaries of Gunton Denes have been roughly marked in, probably by the same hand. The map was seen and described before 1848 by Suckling, op. cit., ii, p. 6. See: H. M. T. Cobbe, 'Four manuscript maps recently acquired by the British Museum', Journal of the Society of Archivists, iv (1973), pp. 646-652; P. D. A. Harvey, Maps in Tudor England (1993), p. 107 and pl. 76. Suckling states that the map had belonged successively to Thomas Martin of Palgrave, then to Isaac Gillingwater, who bound it up as item no. 2 in a volume entitled 'Drawings illustrative of the history of Lowestoft, Mutford and Lothingland collected by I. Gillingwater' (1807). Gillingwater's volume was owned by Robert Reeve by 1848 and remained with the Reeve family until it was sold by the executors of the heir to the family, E. S. Franey of West Clandon, co. Surr., on 23 November 1966. By then or shortly afterwards, the map was removed from the Gillingwater volume, which was acquired by the Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office in 1968 and numbered HD 196:1212; see Charles W. Traylen, Cat. 71, item 484. A modern tracing of the map is in Lowestoft Borough Library. Presented by Charles W. Traylen, 19 July 1969.

Vellum. Pen and ink. 300 x 690mm.