Fishing boats are tied up in Gloucester, Mass., the home port of a vessel that that went missing at sea with seven people aboard, on Jan. 30, 2026. AP Photo/Robert F. BukatyGLOUCESTER, Mass.The search

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The only known original copy of a Elizabethan map of Kingsbridge has been acquired by the South West Heritage Trust after more than four centuries in private hands. Funded by a grant of 17,691 ($24,220) from the Friends of the Nations Libraries, the trust was able to arrange a private sale for 18,428 ($25,230) a week before the rare document was set to be sold at auction. It will now be publicly accessible to researchers at the Devon Heritage Centre in Exeter.The birds-eye view of Kingsbridge, known as the Kingsbridge Platt, dates to 1586 and is the oldest known map of Kingsbridge. The map is a pen and ink drawing on vellum with watercolor wash. There are six different colors painted on the vellum, are still vivid. This is all the more significant considering that before the original was offered at auction in November 2025, the map was only known from a black and white reproduction published in The Gentlemans Magazine in 1796.The front of the document is entitled: The trewe platt of the newe bylding, upon fyve pyllers of stone, betwixt the Church styles of kyngsbrydge. On the verso is a more simple ink label: The mapp of Kingsbrig. Both inscriptions are contemporary, written at the time the map was made. It depicts the important buildings of the Tudor town, including the 13th century parish church, the pillory and the timber-frame Market House, then dubbed Chepe House, where the manor court was held. Theres a preponderance of stone homes, unusual in an era when most homes were still wood, with blue slate and red brick tile roofs. The most elaborate home is the residence of George French, a merchant. Behind his house are outbuildings and an elaborate walled garden containing a bower house and an arch.It was commissioned as an estate map documenting the properties of Sir John Petre, the son of Sir William Petre who had risen from modest origins as the son of a tanner to becoming Secretary of State to King Henry VIII, King Edward VI and Queen Mary. He was on Elizabeth Is Privy Council, acting as deputy to Secretary of State Robert Cecil when he was in Scotland before finally retired due to ill health. Petre managed to navigate the rapids of four consecutive Tudor courts unscathed despite his Catholicism, the only privy councilor from the period to have served without having been interrupted temporarily or permanently by imprisonment, exile, house arrest, forced retirement or execution.A large part of his success was doubtless due to his flexible attitude towards religion. He was willing to soft peddle his Catholicism when the winds blew that way, and he made an absolutely killing on the Dissolution of the Monasteries. His seat at Ingatestone Hall in Essex was a former abbey property he bought for a song, and he secured vast tracts of land, about 36,000 acres, from former monastic properties in Devonshire near where his family had lived since the 14th century.Kingsbridge, less than 20 miles southwest of Torbryan where Sir William was born, was part of the Devonshire estates acquired after the Dissolution. The family is known to have hired skill draftsmen to document their Ingatestone estates, so its likely they employed one of those artists to do the same thing for Kingsbridge. John Petre, who would later be raised to the peerage as the 1st Baron Petre in 1603, inherited his fathers holdings after his death in 1572. His manorial land called Norton is visible on the map on the far side of the mill stream.Scott Pettitt, Head of Devon Archives and Local Studies:Contemporary visual representations of provincial towns from the Elizabethan period are remarkably scarce. While several wellknown depictions of London, Oxford and Cambridge survive, illustrations of smaller towns from this era are seldom found.Geordie Greig, Chair of Friends of the Nations Libraries:Estate maps of the 16th century are extremely rare, and this sort of view even rarer. This is an exceptional example. It is an absolute triumph for South West Heritage Trust to have acquired it and we were delighted to help to secure the map for the people of Devon.