Pictures in Print - The geographical area of the project

The area covered by the project is County Durham as it was before the 1974 boundary changes. The roughly triangular county of Durham, with Northumberland to the north, the North Sea or German Ocean to the east, Yorkshire to the south and just stretching over to Cumberland and Westmorland to the west, is recognisable through the sequence of county maps from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Fitting a triangle into a rectangular frame left considerable space around the outside. Apart from elaborate framed titles and coats of arms, this proved useful for maps of the city of Durham and pictures of the cathedral, as well as descriptive text.

The County of Durham has a unique place amongst English counties due to its administrative history, but even in modern times it has been subject to many changes. In most historical studies of counties, it is usual to set their boundaries as they were before the 1974 re-organisation of county boundaries, at which time many new (and sometimes short-lived) areas were created. With the creation of Tyne & Wear in 1974, Gateshead, the towns along the south bank of the Tyne, and Sunderland were no longer part of the County, and more recently the development of unitary authorities has given places like Darlington their own administration.

Long before this, the County had undergone several changes. In the Middle Ages it had been placed under the Bishops of Durham, who ruled over both church (spiritual) and state (temporal) within their borders. The Diocese of Durham, under the Bishop's spiritual administration, until the mid-nineteenth century comprised both the counties of Durham and Northumberland, minus some districts belonging to York and including some parts of North Yorkshire. The Palatinate of Durham, under the Bishop's temporal rule, consisted of County Durham and some detached parts of Northumberland and North Yorkshire. Many of the bishop's temporal powers had been reduced in the reign of King Henry VIII, and some survived until quite recently, but much of the dismantling of the Palatinate took place in the 19th century. Many of the lands, and the valuable mineral rights that had made the diocese so rich were re-distributed across the Church of England, the diocese was split into Newcastle and Durham (and some parts went to Ripon), and in a series of administrative reforms the detached parts of the temporal administration were absorbed into the counties that surrounded them.

The 1831 Greenwood map of County Durham is unusual in including these detached parts of the county. Bedlingtonshire (centred on Bedlington in Northumberland) is drawn in situ to the north, while inset maps show Norham and Islandshire (the area around Holy Island in Northumberland) and Crayke (a small manor to the north of York)

For the creators of topographical prints, the most notable of the detached parts was the area around Lindisfarne or Holy Island, which had been the original seat of the bishops of Durham. Both the ruined abbey on Holy Island and the bishop's castle at Norham feature in topographical prints, and may be referred to as being located in county Durham - Billing's Antiquities of County Durham includes prints of both. These places have not been included within Pictures in Print, however, as they were no longer in the modern (pre-1974) County Durham.

In some cases, maps of larger areas have been included because their main focus is on the County. Most of these maps were the result of business and commerce. Several series of coal maps were produced in the region, some showing the location of coal seams or the mines, others concentrating as much on who owned the land on the surface above the pits. Like the coal maps, those showing the rapidly developing railway network do not observe strict county boundaries in the way that earlier county maps do: such distinctions were no longer as relevant. An interesting early example of this breakdown of the traditional administrative unit is a map of 1773 showing the meetings of the Society of Friends in the northern counties