The map reveals Barnsley as still a small market town clustered around Market Hill and May Day Green although industrialisation is already evident with four linen mills and a foundry just to the west of the town centre. The railway has only recently arrived with the station sited at the edge of the fields three hundred yards east of the centre. Interestingly the trains do not yet run through the town as the station is a terminus for two railway companies, one from Lancashire and the north, the other from the south. The east-west line is clearly still under construction which in the near future will make Barnsley an important railway junction and significantly improve its commercial development. Coal mining is already well established around the town but the map shows the mines still connected by tramroads to the pre-railway transport system - the canals.
The map is a fascinating document of an age long past and will be of great interest to the people of present day Barnsley and those who have ever lived in the town.
