The same, but different

The Bodleian Library’s catalogues have a complicated history. New acquisitions are of course catalogued online and appear straight away on the online catalogue, SOLO. However, the collections have been acquired over the centuries and earlier records were made on index cards, in printed volumes and even as handwritten records. Over the years, these earlier records have been converted into online records, but the information is not always as comprehensive as it would be if we acquired the item now and catalogued it to modern standards.

This is what library catalogues looked like in the old days, kids

So when we occasionally discover that we have two duplicate records for the same thing, and that it’s been in our collections for over 200 years, this isn’t particularly surprising and can usually be tidied up quickly. A recent case proved more intriguing. We appeared to have 2 separate records for an eighteenth-century map of London. There was one record for 3 copies of the map, and another for a single copy – surely a mistake? The map is a reproduction of one made by John Leake in 1667 after the Great Fire of London. (The need for detailed surveys for reconstruction after the fire led to the making of many maps, and indeed started the map-making career of the famous John Ogilby, who made and published a detailed survey with his step-grandson William Morgan). Leake’s map was reproduced over 50 years later by the engraver George Vertue, reduced in size and with embellishments such as views of notable buildings and streets before the fire.

The red line shows the extent of the area damaged by the Great Fire

A dotted line, highlighted in red, shows the extent of the area affected, and a cartouche carries a Latin inscription by George Vertue explaining that the map is a memento of London before the fire, and is dedicated to the Society of Antiquaries of London (who published this version of the map in 1723).

The cartouche represents a ruined fragment of wall

So far this is an interesting map, but there is an associated mystery, for the two versions of it turn out to be not quite the same. In one (presumably earlier) the lower border of the map runs through the River Thames, a little way from the shore. The names of docks, wharves and so on extend into the river. The plate mark (where the edge of the copper printing plate pressed into the paper) can be seen about 0.5 cm below the edge of the map border.

The second copy is different. Although the map is almost identical, and certainly printed from the same plate, it appears that the plate has been trimmed. The lower border of the map has moved up a little and some of the writing has had to be shifted, while the words ‘The River Thames’ overlap the map border. A similar compression has happened at the top of the map. The plate mark is now only just outside the border of the map.

The later version in which the map’s lower border has been moved up

This is extremely unusual. It was common for map plates to be reused and for changes to be made to them; the map might be updated with new information, or the plate sold and the new publisher’s details added, for example. But we have rarely, if ever, seen a case where the plate was cut down to a smaller size. It is uncertain why this was done, but it’s notable that 2 of our 3 copies of the ‘reduced’ version of the map are printed on paper only just large enough to accommodate the map image. It may be that this was a way to produce the map on slightly smaller sheets, either to reduce costs or for ease of binding with other similar items. This was not a case where we needed to de-duplicate the catalogue records, but rather to retain both and explain their complex relationship in more detail.

An exact surveigh of the streets, lanes, and churches comprehendd. within the ruins of the City of London … / George Vertue [London]: [Society of Antiquaries], [1723]. Gough Maps London 8; Gough Maps London 9 & 10; Map Res. 127

Maps on the radio

Two members of the Map Room team have recently been featured on WRFM, a local radio station based in West Oxfordshire. Science on the Radio is a weekly show, interviewing local experts across a range of fields connected with the sciences, presented by Nina Morgan and Grant Grindley. Broadcast every weekend, the show is also available online as an on-demand podcast.

‘Fascinating Maps‘ is a recent episode featuring Nick Millea, in which he talks about the 3D facsimile of the 15th century Gough Map of Great Britain (MS Gough Gen. Top. 16), recently produced by the Factum Foundation in Madrid. Nick explains that recent high resolution 3D recording of the map has revealed pinholes invisible to the naked eye, indicating that the map is a copy of an earlier map which does not survive. The 3D scanning unusually included the reverse of the map too, allowing confirmation that the pinholes only appear on the front of the map. Identical in size to the original, the facsimile has already proved useful for teaching and displays.

The Gough Map facsimile on display with other collections at a 'show and tell' event at the Weston Library. — The Gough Map facsimile on display with other collections at a ‘show and tell’ event at the Weston Library.

In ‘Digital Mapping‘, Martin Davis explains how some of our maps are being made available online via Digital Bodleian, and also why the digital maps we use every day pose new challenges for the library. While spatial analysis is something that we tend to associate with digital technology, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Martin explains that the origins of these techniques predate digital technology altogether; for example in the work of the 19th century epidemiologist John Snow on the spread of cholera.

Science on the Radio is broadcast on Saturdays at 10am and Sundays at 6pm, and available any time via wrfm.co.uk.

Looks like reindeer

As the Christmas season approached, we wondered how many maps we could find that feature reindeer. Printed maps from the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries often have decorative cartouches around the title and scale, which may reference the area portrayed on the map with local produce, wildlife, costumes or activities. This scale bar from map of Nova Zemla (Novaya Zemlya) by the celebrated Dutch mapmaker Joan Blaeu, is a nice example. It shows men in warm clothing bearing mapmaking equipment (a measuring chain, compasses, staff), observed by two reindeer. One of the map makers, surprisingly, has wings. This first appeared in Blaeu’s impressive multi volume Atlas Maior from the 1660s; this is taken from a French edition, Le grand atlas of 1667.

Reindeer make another appearance in the next map in the atlas, Fretum Nassovium, vulgo de Straet Nassou (showing the Kara Strait, between Novaya Zemlya and the Russian mainland); a cheerful looking reindeer decorates the scale bar, along with a fox and some slightly unconvincing bears.

A beautiful map of the Dvina River in the next volume also shows a group of reindeer looking out over the landscape.

An English example appears in this map of New England, engraved by Francis Lamb for a late edition of John Speed’s Prospect of the most famous parts of the world, published in the 1670s. It is one of many maps of New England in the atlas derived from Jan Jansson’s Belgii Novi. Here the deer appears on the map itself, which is also illustrated with other animals including bears, foxes and storks, all helping to fill up inland areas for which geographical knowledge was limited.

More modern maps also feature reindeer; this mid-twentieth century pictorial map of the world is a charming example:

A recent Michelin tourist map of Finland has a cover illustration showing people enjoying a sleigh ride. No doubt the reindeer are at a loose end for much of the year when Santa doesn’t need them, so are happy to give rides to tourists.:

Two final, perhaps more frivolous examples are particularly aimed at younger viewers. A seasonal map of Birmingham city centre invites visitors to follow a reindeer trail:

While Collins world atlas sticker book features a friendly reindeer for younger readers. It was one of the maps submitted by the UK to the annual International Cartographic Association exhibition as an example of UK cartography; educational maps are important!

Merry Christmas from the Map Room.

Nova Zemla, Fretum Nassovium, abd Dwina fluvius; all from Le grand atlas, ou, Cosmographie blaviane, en la quelle est exactement descritte la terre, la mer, et le ciel. Amsterdam : Chez Jean Blaeu, MDCLXVII [1667] Map Res. 45-51.

‘A map of New England and New York,’ from The theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine … as also A prospect of the most famous parts of the world. London: Thomas Bassett and Richard Chiswell, 1676. Map Res. 112

Extract from Philips pictorial globe. London: George Philip, [1959]. B1 (440)

Michelin Finland: motoring and tourist map [cover]. Paris: Michelin Éditions, 2024. C35 (334)

Brum’s Christmas reindeer trail. [Birmingham] :Central Bid Birmingham, [2024]. C17:70 Birmingham (110)

Extract from Collins world atlas sticker book. London: Collins, 2013. ICA 2013 UK 029

Mountain man

Of the three main ways that material comes into the library; legal deposit, purchase and donation, donations are usually the best. More often than not these are older maps, sometimes with annotations or with a good story attached (here). So it was exciting to get a box recently from an Oxford resident, of maps that belonged to her grandfather. The maps are a mixture of locations and dates, but most are of hilly and mountainous places.

Born in Florence in 1889 to a British family John Alfred Spranger (J.A.S from now on) was a man of many talents. A skilled photographer (examples of his work can be found here Fragmented Archives: an Example of the Photographs of J.A. Spranger in the SPHS Collection – British School at Athens ), an engineer and a cartographer. He also published works on Greek manuscripts and took part in the publishing of a version of the Greek New Testament. And he liked to climb mountains.

Inevitably the maps concentrate on his life in the mountains, and are mostly of areas close to Italy. Maps of mountainous regions, with the need to show relief and dramatic landscapes, are often beautifully engraved and as a result usually look wonderful (see the map at the end of the blog). Here’s a 1896 map of the Mont Blanc Massif, part of the Alps that J.A.S.started climbing in the years leading up to World War One.

La Chaine du Mont-Blanc, 1896, C21:44 (54)

J.A.S. took part in an Italian expedition led by Filippo de Filippi to the Himalayas, Karakoram and Eastern Turkestan between 1913 and 1914, finishing the expedition late into that most ominous of years. A book by de Filippi, published in 1932 and including a chapter and photographs by J.A.S., who did the majority of the surveying work on the expedition, concludes with this poignant last paragraph ‘So we had to part from our English colleagues, Wood and Spranger, who left for Salonika to embark for Brindisi. We Italians went to Budapest and on December 18th we crossed the borders of our country after more than sixteen months of absence’.

The collection is mainly made up of European mapping, with a number for the Mont-Blanc and Swiss Alps regions. There are also two beautiful photographic panoramas, one of which is of the Gornergrat region, in the Pennie Alps of Switzerland. The panorama is too long to show well, but here’s an extract that includes the Matterhorn

Zermatt, panorama vom Gornergrat, c1930, C39:7 d.1

In 1924 J.A.S. travelled to Canada, and started climbing in the Cariboo Mountain range in British Columbia. He seems to have been the first to climb a peak called Flat Mountain as, soon after, this peak was renamed Mount Spranger by the Canadian Survey Department. During his time in British Columbia J.A.S. bought some maps of the Cariboo area which are in the donation and, more importantly, used his cartographic skills to make a couple of manuscript maps of the area. Here’s the official 1973 1:50,000 map showing Mount Spranger

and here’s the manuscript map by J.A.S. of the same area, with Flat Mtn. at top left.

Canada 1:50,000 sheet 94 A/15, 1973, F4 (21) and Sketch map of Mitchell Lake, c1924, MS F4:11 (241)

Finally an extract from the ‘Theodulpass’ sheet of the Topographischer Atlas der Schweiz’ 1;50,000 sheet (1944, C39:28 (21)) showing the Matterhorn, one of the highest mountains in Europe and also one of the deadliest of all climbs in terms of deaths in attempt of any in the World. Proof, if still needed, of the beauty to be found in maps of mountains.

A change of address

In 1792 the noted engraver and cartographer John Cooke (1765-1845) moved from Drury Lane, London to Mill Hill. In a novel approach to a change of address card for existing and new clients Cooke made this map: ‘He has taken this method to inform them that he has removed from London to Mill Hill’.

A new map of the roads from London to Mill Hill & Barnet. By John Cooke, Engraver, at Mill Hill, Middx. 1792 Gough Maps Middlesex 46.

Cooke at this time must have been in his late twenties; he had left his apprenticeship some five years before. He had been apprenticed initially to bookbinder Mary Cooke (most likely a family connection) before transferring to the engraver William Wells and then John Russell, the latter an important cartographer and engraver of maps. Cooke had now embarked on what was to be a successful and productive career, with apprentices of his own and many works to his name. Although Mill Hill is today very much a suburb of London, at that time the area’s distance of eight or nine miles from Cooke’s previous base in the City would have seemed considerable. The map is very beautifully engraved, and serves to advertise the quality of Cooke’s work. Hills are indicated by delicate hachuring, and the hand colouring is sufficient to enhance the map without obscuring the fine engraving. The text panel explains that he has removed from London to Mill Hill, but that he is still at his customers’ service, since ‘the Mill Hill Errand Cart sets out every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from the Bull Inn, Holborn at one, and at two o’clock from the Cock in Tottenham Court Road…’ Distances are noted with tiny numbers along the roads. The map demonstrates how easily communications may be carried between London and Mill Hill. Cooke’s trade card at the time also included a detailed map of the area around his house.

Cooke was to switch between the country around the city and London a number of times. By the end of the century he was back in central London and employed to engrave charts for the Admiralty and for numerous private publishers. But we can only conclude that London living did not suit Cooke, for by 1817 he had made what was to be a permanent move to Plymouth, Devon, where he spent the rest of his reasonably long life. This seems like a surprising choice considering how central to the publishing industry London was but a large amount of Cooke’s work was to do with navigation and shipping and after his move he made numerous maps on Plymouth as the area grew in importance with the building and developing of new or existing docks by the Navy.

Here’s Cooke’s map of the new Breakwater being built in Plymouth Sound, which in 1806 had an estimated cost of £1,170,000 (£88,000,000 at current rate)

Cooke’s guide to Plymouth Sound and Breakwater, 1806. G.A. Devon 8° 341 (9)

Cooke’s most famous work, The Universal Atlas, was published in 1802 when Cooke was in Howland Street, London. Cooke made the maps, ‘accurately delineated by an eminent geographer‘ while the Rev. Thomas Smith wrote the introduction and the descriptions. Along with maps of the continents and countries there are maps of the Solar System and a ‘geographical clock’ designed by Cooke which works by moving the marker on the inner dial to a location, which then makes this location noon, from there all the other times can be read (so here it’s noon in London, so 1am in the Great South Sea).

The universal atlas, and introduction to modern geography, 1802, Gough Gen. top. 202

Many of Cooke’s customers from his later career appear to have been based locally in the West Country, although he had previously worked for some of the major London mapmakers. He also appears to have branched out into copperplate printing.

With the Mill Hill map Cooke shows his skills as both a cartographer and an engraver and this is as much an advertisement of his abilities as a notice of the change in address. He also cleverly makes the best use of the area he wants to show by including the change in angle north of Finchley and Hendon to come up with this beautifully designed work, allowing for text and compass rose to be shown in opposite corners. This strip approach to mapping brings to mind John Ogilby’s ground-breaking road maps of almost a hundred years before (see Measuring distances, a wheel or a chain? | Bodleian Map Room Blog).

Our Cooke, John, was one of a number of Cooke’s active in London at this time. His brother Stephen (1768-1854) was an apprentice to John in the 1780s. He remained in London and also had a long map engraving career, employed by such well known map publishers as William Faden and Laurie & Whittle. The brothers William Cooke (1778-1855) and George (1781-1834), no relation to john and Stephen, both worked with map-makers such as Arrowsmith as well as non-map engraving work.

Four seasons

Dating from circa 1670 this is a map from the Dutch Golden Age, when ships set out from the Netherlands to trade and set up colonies. The Dutch East India Company had trading posts throughout the Indies, controlled the spice trade and, for a time, was the only nation to have a trade link with Japan, while the Dutch West India Company were doing similar in South America. Trade and cartography went hand-in-hand, with high quality maps by the leading cartographers of the day helping in the exploration and navigation of these far-off places.

Nova orbis tabula, in lucem edita…F. de Wit, c1670. Map Res 110

Frederick de Wit’s Nova Orbis Tabula… is a lovely though fairly typical example of a World double-hemisphere map, but what is of interest are the wonderful representations of the seasons in each corner. These insets also feature, in three of the four, representations of the continents* as well.

Spring is represented by a maiden, often Persephone, the symbol of spring growth. To her left is a bull, the animal symbol along with a horse for Europe.

Summer is Ceres, Goddess of the harvest who represents Earth’s natural abundance. She’s also the mother of Persephone. Ceres often appears on maps and her control of the growth, harvest and dying back of plants during the year reflected human existence on earth. The lion is a symbol for Africa, and the scorpion in this case is one of the animals associated with Ceres.

With the harvest done Autumn is a time to celebrate, Bacchus represents this season, drinking wine and supported by a pair of satyrs, themselves representations of lust and mischief. Another scorpion, this time for Africa.

Finally Winter, whose symbol is an old King wrapped up against the cold. No animal representation for America, which is usually a crocodile or armadillo but the male goat can also be used as a symbol for winter, when they are generally more active as this is when female goats come on heat. Which leads to fertility, which leads us back to spring, and growth and abundance, and the cycle goes round again.

Symbolism is an important and fascinating part of cartography. At the very least these allegorical pictures fill what would be empty spaces but at the time the audience for the maps would have understood both the meaning and the message. The seasons seem an obvious topic for a map, as they signify not just the changes in the weather and the time of the year but mark the earth’s progress in space and around the Sun. But people would have also understood how this connection with time through the year was also linked with our journey through life, it’s no coincidence that Spring is shown as a young maid, Summer an Earth Goddess, Autumn an older man and finally an old man in Winter.

This is also a blog about people, with a strong connection to Oxford and the Bodleian. De Wit’s map seems to be a smaller version of larger World map with the same title from 1660. The map is the first in a collection of maps which have been bound together at some point, in an unknown hand the title is given as ‘The first volume in a collection of more than one hundred maps of all the Kingdoms and Provinces in Europe by severall authours…1691′. The connection with Oxford, and the probable reason for the volume ending up here at the Bodleian is that the atlas once belonged to William Charles Cotton, brother of Sarah Cotton. Sarah married Sir Henry Acland, one-time physician to the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII, see this blog ) and Librarian of the Radcliffe Science Library. Acland wrote a report in 1854 about cholera epidemics in the city, which included one of the earliest disease maps published in Britain (more on this map here) .

In 1839 Cotton was ordained a priest and in 1841 he sailed to New Zealand to be Chaplain to the newly appointed Bishop of New Zealand. He was also a noted apiarist, and wrote a number of books on bee-keeping (including the wonderfully titled ‘My Bee Book’, published in 1842 and written when he was a student at Christ Church in Oxford). Cotton spent seven years in New Zealand before returning to Britain. At the front of the atlas are a letter and a note from Cotton. The hand-writing for both is very hard to read, and parts of the letter have lines written over lines at right-angles, but both are to Henry Coxe, Bodley’s Librarian, in 1878 offering the collection of maps to the library, or ‘if not wanted to be returned to Mrs. Acland’. The Acland’s lived at numbers 39-41 Broad Street which in a remarkable coincidence was one of the houses knocked down for the building of what is now the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Library, and where the maps are stored (and from where I’m writing this piece).

* Since this blog went live a colleague in Theology has pointed out an alternative view of some of the figures represented, which makes more sense, and that is that the signs of the Zodiac are represented. So in Spring the bull also represents Taurus and the ram Aries. In Summer the scorpion is more likely a lobster, which would represent Cancer and the lion Leo. In Autumn the scales represent Libra, the lion Leo and the archer Sagittarius. Finally Winter, with the fishes Pisces and the goat Capricorn.

If that’s not enough, how many other maps feature someone being sick from too much drink?

Digging deep: charting the rise and fall of British coal

Midnight on 1st October 2024 saw the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station close for the final time, marking the end of a 142-year history of coal-based energy production in Britain. The development of coal, industry, and infrastructure have been closely linked throughout this period, with many maps in our collection highlighting these connections.

Small-scale, localised coal mining is likely to have taken place in Britain for several centuries, but it was not until the 18th century that more substantial shafts began to appear on the landscape. This detailed site plan of the coal works at Kinnaird, Scotland is dated 1776, and shows the development of excavations over the preceding 18 months.

A plan of Kinnaird main coal workings at Jan 4th 1775 shewing also the space wrought from that period to 1st Aug. 1776 (1776), Gough Maps Scotland 86

As well as a planimetric map of the site, a cross section is also included, clearly showing the various layers of ‘the different coal’ and the depths and locations of various shafts.

By the mid 19th century, coal production had dramatically increased, providing a crucial catalyst for the industrial revolution. Entire regions became peppered with new collieries, as shown by this ultra large-format 1850 map of the ‘Great Northern Coalfield’, spanning large parts of Northumberland and County Durham.

Map of the great northern coalfield in the counties of Northumberland & Durham, including the whole of the coal mining districts of the Tyne, Wear and Tees and those of Hartlepool, Seaham, Hartley, Blyth and Warkworth, From actual survey by J.T.W. Bell (1850), (E) C17:2 (2)

In some parts, such as this area south west of Bishop Auckland, the concentration of collieries is remarkably dense, appearing very prominently with capitalised labels.

With the increase in coal mining came the increasing need for transport infrastructure to match. The emergence of railways connecting collieries with major cities and ports is clear on the ‘Great Northern’ map, but this 1845 map published by Longman & Co. shows that this development was widespread, and in parallel with the construction of canals. Here, coalfields are indicated using a grey tint, with the Tyne, South Wales, and Firth of Forth coalfields already very substantial by this time.

Map exhibiting the navigable rivers, the completed & proposed canals & railroads of Great Britain & Ireland, with the coal fields, lighthouses etc (1845), (E) C15 (150)

It was not until the 1910s that coal production reached its peak, although coal still accounted for around 90% of UK electricity production until the 1960s, when oil and nuclear began to see significant expansions. The ‘Coal and Iron’ map produced by Ordnance Survey at the end of the Second World War shows the extent of coal mining in Lancashire, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands in particular, immediately prior to nationalisation in 1947.

Great Britain. Coal and Iron. Compiled… from… maps… and from information… referring to the year 1940, sheet 2 (1945), C16 (251) [13]

The closure of the final coal-fired power station is a significant landmark as the UK, alongside many other countries, pursues Net Zero and low-carbon policies. In no small part, this shift has been facilitated by the exponential growth of renewable energy production, including wind, wave, solar, and hydroelectric power.

The 16th edition of the ‘Wind farms’ map, produced by La Tene Maps and RenewableUK in 2020, shows that it is wind farms which now characterise many of our landscapes and seascapes, as the once dominant coal industry continues to fade from view.

Britain – wind farms (2020), C16 (937)

Adventures in maps

Many of the maps in our collections were made for, or about, travel. And even now in an age when we increasingly use satnavs or GPS to find our way, a map that you can hold in your hands has its own charm. A recent Bodleian book, Adventures in maps, uses some of these to tell the stories of 20 different journeys, on foot, horseback, train, car, sailing ship and spacecraft. They include early sea charts and explorers’ maps, as well as maps marketed when travel became more widespread and commercial. The chart below shows mariners’ routes across the Southern Ocean, many of them following the traditional ‘Clipper route’ devised in the seventeenth century to take advantage of the most favourable winds.

The dangers of sea travel are illustrated with a story by Basil Hall, a Lieutenant aboard the British frigate Endymion, who took part in the first recorded landing on Rockall in October 1811. Rockall, an isolated rocky islet in the North Atlantic, is over 300 km from the nearest inhabited land, the Scottish island of St Kilda. The Endymion dropped off an exploring party in two small boats, and as the sailors recorded and sketched the island, they failed to notice for some time that a slight haze was gathering on the sea. Once they realised that their ship was becoming invisible in the mist, they hastily, and with some difficulty, got everyone down from the steep rock and into the small boats. But by then it was too late; their ship was out of sight in the fog. Despite some alarming experiences everyone was eventually rescued. On the same voyage they also rescued a party of survivors from a shipwreck, including several women and children, who were trying to reach land with only oars and an improvised sail; their prospects would have been poor if the Endymion had not come to their help. The chart illustrated here was made over 100 years later but makes clear both the inaccessibility of Rockall and the fact that the sea around it was still barely surveyed. It includes a drawing of Rockall as seen from the sea which emphasises its inaccessibility.Over the next few decades increasing numbers of people had the opportunity to travel. Thomas Cook organised the first package tour in July 1841, buying train tickets in bulk at a discount for 500 people travelling from Leicester to Loughborough for a temperance meeting and celebrations. A contemporary railway map in an unusual style, printed white on black, accompanies a guide to the line.

Cook went on to organise similar train trips locally, and within 10 years was taking tourists to the Scottish Highlands, and within twenty to France and Switzerland. By the 1870s Cook’s Tours had reached the Nile, and trips to North America soon followed. By this time there was plenty of competition as the idea of mass tourism took off. But Cook was the pioneer, and his company continued until the early twenty-first century.

The book also includes maps made by explorers showing their routes, such as the one made by a companion of the archaeologist David George Hogarth, travelling through Anatolia in 1894. It shows the places where they crossed the Euphrates in a terrifyingly leaky ferry and, later, forded one of its tributaries guided by a local man who took an apparently random route to avoid quicksand. Hogarth published an account of the expedition, his experiences and the archaeological finds.

You can read more in Adventures in maps, available from the Bodleian book shop.

Eastern hemisphere. From Philips’ centenary mercantile marine atlas London: George Philip, 1935. 2021 a.34.

Inset showing Rockall. From [Chart of the N.W. Coast of Scotland, including Faeroe Island & Orkney & Shetland Islands.] London: Imray, Laurie, Norie & Wilson, 1917. C18:3 (1)

Plan of the Midland counties railway. From A guide or companion to the Midland counties railway Leicester: Tebbutt, 1840. G.A. Gen. top. 8° 458

Detail from Mr Hogarth’s route from Khalfat to Malatia / F.W. Green, 1895. MS D30:8 (2)

Les cartes olympiques de Paris

Hosting the Olympic Games is a huge task for even the largest and most seasoned of cities, requiring years of careful logistical planning. However, hosting the Games also presents a cartographic challenge, with transport alterations and dozens of temporary venues rendering ordinary city maps inadequate for visitors. Special maps are often commissioned by upcoming hosts, allowing easy navigation by the influx of international travellers. Such event maps are ephemeral by definition, but many are preserved in our collections (you can read more about our collection of Olympic maps here).

As the XXXIII Olympiad draws to a close in Paris, we’ve taken a look back through our collection of maps made for the three Games held in the French capital to date; in 1900, 1924, and 2024.

The 1900 Olympics coincided with the Exposition Universelle, a world’s fair which attracted some 48 million visitors to Paris over a seven-month period. The Parisian publishing house Garnier Frères published this map of the exhibition sites, which clustered around a central portion of the River Seine. It features an overview map alongside four enlarged insets which show the details of the exhibition displays.

Plan de l’exposition universelle de 1900 (1900), C21:50 Paris (8)

Detail showing the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, which were built especially for the event. C21:50 Paris (8)

Foreign publishers also took advantage of the event, with Edinburgh-based W. & A.K. Johnston Ltd. publishing this map for an Anglophone audience. The Johnston map incorporates three different scales on one sheet; the exhibition sites, central Paris, and the whole of France.

W. & A.K. Johnston’s plan of Paris, and Exhibition, and map of France (1900), C21:50 Paris (14)

Detail of the River Seine, showing the ‘foreign section’ and the artistic exhibitions. The river itself hosted the Olympic rowing, swimming, and water polo events in 1900. C21:50 Paris (14)

The first operational part of the Paris Metro opened part way through the 1900 Olympics, but its rapid expansion in the following decades meant that it played a more significant role in subsequent Games. This 1922 map by A. Taride uses a red overprint on a street plan to highlight the lines that would have been at the disposal of visitors to the 1924 Olympics, incorporating the competing Métropolitain and Nord-Sud networks, which did not merge into a unified system until 1930. The centrepiece of the 1924 Games was the Yves du Manoir Stadium in Colombes, which hosted nine sports, in addition to the Opening Ceremony. However, neither the Metro system or Taride’s map extend as far north west as Colombes.

Nouveau plan de Paris avec toutes les lignes du métropolitain et du nord-sud (1922), C21:50 Paris (47)

Detail of the area around the Champs-Élysées and Place de la Concorde, showing the convergence of Metro lines. C21:50 Paris (47)

One hundred years later, the 2024 Games opened in a very different, digital world. This time, organisers have launched a specially designed mobile app which provides dynamic navigation instructions using real-time data to flexibly disperse crowds and ease congestion. Alongside this high-tech solution, the organisers have also provided an outage-proof paper map, which joins our collection hot off the press. While 2024 marks the third time Paris has hosted the Olympic Games, it is the first time that the city has hosted the Paralympic Games, with the map designed to cater for both events.

The Yves du Manoir Stadium reprises its Olympic role as the venue of the hockey tournaments, but once again does not appear within the main map frame, which only includes central Paris. However, the Grand Palais, built for the 1900 exposition, does feature; this time as the Olympic and Paralympic venue for fencing and taekwondo — as well as a cameo in the Opening Ceremony, during which La Marseillaise was performed from its rooftop.

Paris 2024 : plan des transports publics (2024), C21:50 Paris (219)

Produced by Lyon-based firm Latitude-Cartagène (which specialises in event mapping), the Paris 2024 map draws on OpenStreetMap data and, like Taride’s map, focuses on public transport. The map tackles the unenviable design challenge of combining a street plan and extensive transit map with station closure information, 17 Olympic venues, and the locations of the city’s permanent tourist highlights. With an audience travelling from over 200 countries, the cartographer’s brief is made harder by having to avoid any culture-specific conventions or language. All the while, the map must be sympathetic to the Paris 2024 branding style — an important commercial aspect of a modern Games — as well as that of the regional public transport authority, Île-de-France Mobilités. Using a pastel base map, minimal text, pictorial symbols, and a broad colour palette for the thematic content, it clears these hurdles with gold medal-worthy clarity.

How to make a map Soviet style. Part two.

We often tend to look on maps, and by extension all other forms of art or literature, as a finished thing. This is done without any thought but in doing so we miss out on the skill and work that goes into the making. We’ve blogged about the making of maps, the science of cartography, by both the Austrian military and the Soviet cartographic department before, and a recent donation to the library has added more material to this fascinating field.

Some map-makers maps are distinctive due to style or choice of colours, and that is certainly the case with this set of four educational maps at different scales, published by the Glavnoe Upravlenie Geodezii i Kartografii pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR, (Main Directorate of Geodesy and Cartography under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, otherwise known as the GUGK). The use of soft pastel colours is instantly recognizable as from the GUGK and seems in contrast to the impression we have of a Soviet style of brutalist architecture and politics, but does allow for a beautiful map design (more on Soviet mapping can be found here and here).

Of the four maps in the pamphlet, the one at 1:50,000 is the most informative. Around the edge are instructions on surveying, depicting relief and profile and making grids. Part of the relief instructions shows heights above sea levels in profile.

The maps date from 1987, an important time in the history of the Soviet Union. Despite the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 and a new era of openness and more freedom than previously allowed under the concept of glasnost, the explosion and release of a radiation cloud over northern Europe from the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in 1986 showed how weak and secretive the Soviet Union was (we blogged about Chernobyl here). Four years later, the Soviet system collapsed, bringing in a new, post-communist, Russia.

Despite the convincing topography these maps show imagined locations. The maps start at 1:100,000 then gradually focus on a smaller area as you go down through scales, like a cartographic set of Russian dolls. So the town of Snov (Снов) gets gradually bigger with each increase in scale down to 1:10,000 (1:100,000 top, 1:50,000 2nd, 1:25,000 3rd, 1:10,000 bottom).

This set will go into the O section of the map storage area, drawers full of maps of imaginary lands. Produced by the Soviet State to help their cartographers make maps of both the Soviet Union and many other countries, this set will lie in a drawer with maps of Middle Earth, the Island of Sodor and Ambridge.

Uchebnye topograficheskie karty, 1987. O1 (42)