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The tapestry was one of a set of four tapestry maps made in the 1580s. They were commissioned by Ralph Sheldon to hang in his new house at Weston in Warwickshire. The other maps showed Oxfordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire. They would have hung together to create a panoramic view of England from London to the Bristol Channel.
The maps were made at the Sheldon tapestry works at Barcheston, set up by Ralph's father, and where local men trained to become weavers.
This is the only surviving map. It is important because it's a rare example of an English tapestry, and possibly unique as a tapestry
map. It is a pictorial record of Elizabethan Warwickshire, showing hills, rivers, open fields and forests, towns, villages and the great houses of the gentry.
It shows the Warwickshire of William Shakespeare, born at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 - the landscape which inspired the physical world of many of his plays.