The earliest known plan of a Derbyshire town, this map is a bird’s eye view from St Oswald’s Church. It was drawn for use in a dispute over land enclosures. The original is held in the National Archives and the Surveyor is not known.
This section shows a small town built around a triangular market place with regular houses placed along the streets with burgage plots (medieval crofts) behind. This town plan is still evident on the ground today.
Many houses follow an alternating front-on and side-on pattern still seen in the gingerbread cafe in St John’s Street and the Lamplight Restaurant in Victoria Square, which were both built before this map was drawn.