The History of London in Maps

by Felix;Jackson Barker

Vivid survey of London in maps since the 1550's, accompanied by contemporary views.

In addition to the classic maps, there are many usual ones: a Victorian view from a balloon, a map designed to be worn as a glove, and maps that show the creation of the West end, Regency London, Trafalgar Square, Mayfair, and Belgravia.

Other Details: 332 illustrations, 50 in full color 176 pages 9 1/2 x 9 1/2" Published 1993

beautifully planned Regency area.

It was to be expected that most topographical changes would be recorded, but national events have also made their mark on maps. We are given the invasion preparations for the Armada, and see how defences against the Royalists were built round London in the Civil War. Maps graphically depict the consequences of the Great Fire, of Zeppelin raids in the first world war, and of the Blitz in the second. Hollar was on hand to show the devastation of the City in 1666; John Ogilby to let us see how much had been rebuilt within two decades; and the Ordnance Survey to reveal the City's slow reconstruction after the Blitz.

London bristles with experts, but we think we have found some minor surprises for even the most knowledgeable. There is, for instance, an ostrich which William Morgan took the trouble to include in his 1692 map of St James's Park. It was a gift from the Moroccan Ambassador, and the poor bird was laughed at. An early map of the Isle of Dogs marks an isolated Chapel House (long since buried under Mudchute) which is very mysterious until we discover that it was a resting place for pilgrims travelling from Canterbury to Waltham Abbey. On a plan of Deptford Royal Dockyard a workhouse is included which the surveyor who drew the map gives no indication (and may not have known) replaced Sayes Court, the celebrated seventeenth-century home of the diarist John Evelyn. Another surprise in this part of London is the discovery of 400 acres of Kent on the north side of the river—an area of Essex annexed by an eleventh-century sheriff.

We think of Kensington Gore as having social grandeur, but Christopher and John Greenwood surprise us with a curious building to the west of Knightsbridge. It was set eccentrically askew across Kensington Road, where Rutland Gate stands today. This turns out to have been an inn called the Halfway House—a ramshackle eighteenth-century resort of highwaymen that so offended the fashionable neighbourhood that it was acquired and demolished at great cost. But for oddities the prize must surely go to a map that appeared at the time of the 1851 Exhibition. It was printed on the palm of a glove so that visitors had (in every sense) a handy guide to their way about.

If these pleasing trivialities were not recalled on maps they would probably disappear from memory. Few today, except railway buffs, are likely ever to have heard of 'Mr Punch's Railway', an aborted early branch line which, starting from Willesden, made its way south through West Kensington with the avowed intention of forging a link between Birmingham and Southampton. The map we print shows Kensington Canal, to say nothing of the Thames, that were apparently unforeseen obstructions to this derided and doomed project. More important—but perhaps equally forgotten—is Pickett's Place. This was not some trivial address in the suburbs; it was a crescent of architectural distinction built in the Strand. Early in the nineteenth century Butcher Row was pulled down to erect Alderman Pickett's 'Place' opposite St Clement Danes, but hardly was it up than it was demolished to build the Law Courts. A map-maker needed to be fast off the drawing board to catch this short-lived crescent.

With all that we owe to cartographers it is sad that so little is known about even the most distinguished, and how poorly these craftsmen-artists were rewarded for years spent covering hundreds of miles of streets with chains, waywisers (wheeled instruments for taking measurements) and theodolites.

John Norden, who shows us the Tudor Strand palaces and the theatres on Shakespeare's Bankside, had a patron in Lord Burghley to whom he dedicated his work from 'my poore house neere Fulham', complaining that he had been 'forced to struggle against want'. Hollar went to an unmarked grave in Westminster in 1677 and, according to Aubrey, 'died not rich'.

Two of the greatest map-makers—John Rocque, a French Huguenot emigre, and Richard Horwood of Hackney—both died poor. Rocque described himself as a Royal Topographer, but at his death in the 1780s he left only a shilling to each of his nephews. Horwood also had royal patronage, but died aged 45 in obscure poverty in Liverpool, where he went to work on the northern equivalent of his London masterpiece. Almost alone among early map-makers, John Ogilby seems to have enjoyed worldly success, and is one of few of whom a portrait survives. Overleaf we show him making a presentation to Charles II.

Map-makers needed subscribers to keep them going until they...

Genres: Nonfiction, London, Cities

Hardcover

First published February 27, 1990

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My interest was piqued while reading, "Bryant and May: London Bridge is Falling Down" by Christopher Fowler who refers to Peter Jackson's books on the history of London. Peter Jackson is a co-author on "The History of London in Maps," which is a wonderful over-sized coffee table book full of maps and detailed drawings, which provide the reader with "a rich picture of the city in all its stages of development, from mid-Tudor times to the present." Its truly fascinating to read about the evolution of London over time and the factors that precipitated growth and change.