The ancient cock-of-the-north

[faceless]

Early Britain map is cock of the north
by TOM PHILLIPS

It's been a popular pastime for schoolboys down the ages – drawing crude phalluses on their textbooks. But would the pioneering 14th century cartographers who put together this map of Britain – the oldest surviving map of the country – possibly stoop so low? We wouldn't want to say… but surely we can't be the only ones who think that the map makes Britain look a little bit penile?

The map is the so-called 'Gough map', dating from roughly 1360, but likely copied from an earlier map created around 1280, during the reign of Edward I. It's the earliest surviving map that shows Britain in a recognisable shape – even if Scotland's priapic appearance might provoke giggles. Previous maps had been largely rubbish, favouring theology over geography – they would show how Britain fitted into the wider world of Christendom, but would forget to make the island even roughly the right shape.

But the Gough map – named after the 18th century antiquarian Richard Gough, who bought it in 1744 and bequeathed it to the Bodleian Library – boasts a roughly accurate coastline, recognisable rivers, and cities and roads properly positioned. The only thing it gets wrong is Scotland, which was effectively a foreign country at the time, despite Edward I's best efforts to stake a claim to it. Which is why it looks like a big reproductive organ, with many strange, globular islands scattered about it like guilty puddles.

Who created the Gough map, or its predecessor from 1280, remains a mystery – although the degree of detailed knowledge the creator seems to have about the geography of Lincolnshire and south Yorkshire suggests he may have hailed from that part of the world. Or, alternatively, it was produced by a shadowy cabal of Dionysian, phallus-worshipping Freemasons paying tribute to the master architects of Atlantis and secretly pledging the land of Britain to the cult of their pagan Gods. One of the two.

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'Scattered about it like guilty puddles'

[maycm]

Am I the only one to think that the rivers look a little "veiny"?

....yep, I guess I am.

I'll get me coat