About Us
A very warm welcome to the new Barron Maps Blog website
And from me personally, Rod Barron, formerly one of the UK’s leading private antiquarian map dealers.
Spring of 2026 has heralded an important personal and career milestone, marking exactly 40 years since I first started out in the antique map trade.
It seems hard to believe that it was in January 1986 when, barely two years out of University, I was serendipitously recruited as gallery assistant to London map dealer Jonathan Potter in his delightful treasure trove of a shop, located on the corner of Mayfair’s Grafton Street & Hay Hill, close to Berkeley Square.
It was just over three years later, in April 1989, that I eventually set up in the map business on my own account. A business which for the past 37 years has been such a central part of my working life, career, and identity.
Maps, as both a business and personal passion, have sustained and fed me and my family, both literally and metaphorically, through the past four decades.
But all good things must eventually come to an end and 2026 is the year in which my career as an antique map dealer finally concludes. Retirement beckons.
As of March 31st 2026, Barron Maps as a business will cease trading.
You will notice that the current site to which you have been re-directed has a new domain: barronmaps.blog.
This demonstrates the way in which I intend to refocus my unique knowledge & expertise on my cartographic researches and, principally, on my long-established Barron Maps Blog. Over the past eleven years, since the early summer of 2015, the Blog has evolved & developed into something that has become very close to my heart and which I now count amongst my proudest achievements. My background as an historian and researcher enabled me to dig deep into the background of innumerable maps and mapmakers, resulting in 34 fully-illustrated and personally researched, in-depth Posts.
Many more Posts are now planned, so that I dearly hope barronmaps.blog will continue to sustain and feed my enduring passion for maps and continue to excite the interest & enjoyment of cartophiles and collectors for many more years to come!