Author Archives: stuart

‘…not to be altogether perfect…’

The geography of the great solar eclipse of July 14 MDCCXLVIII 1748. Allen LRO 91

On July the 14th 1748 George Smith, an astronomer, surveyor and mathematician from York, mapped out the path of a solar eclipse. A narrow band on ‘The geography of the Great Solar Eclipse of July 14th MDCCXLVIII...’ marks the extent of the total eclipse while around the outside of the map numerous Suns show the amount of shadow from various locations. What bad luck to be just outside the range of total cover!

We know that Smith’s map was made before the eclipse, as it was published by Edward Cave, ‘according to act of Parliament’, in January of that year. Both the Chinese Empire and the empires of the Golden Crescent kept records of eclipses dating back thousands of years and these records have been used to record the changes in the Earth’s movement and for accurately dating historical events. But it wasn’t until the eighteenth century and the works by astronomers such as Edmund Halley* in improving tables recording the journey of the Sun and Moon through the sky that enabled maps such as Smith’s to be able to show the predicted course of the eclipse as opposed to recording this after the event.

An earlier 1724 eclipse map has an interesting story attached to it, highlighting that most common cause of compliant, plagiarism. John Pryer’s map ‘A Pocket Companion of ye Roads of the South Part of Great Britain, called England and Wales…’ is not what it first appears. Originally printed in 1724 the map shows the road system of England and Wales giving distances between major towns and cities and is similar to a host of road and travelling maps published around the same time.

Overprinted onto the original map is additional information tracking the path across the Southern parts of Ireland and England of a solar eclipse on the 11th of May, 1724. The map’s title makes no mention of the eclipse, the only reference to the eclipse on the map states ‘the faint parallel lines drawn cross this map show the passage of the shade of the Moon over England in the total eclipse of the Sun on the 11th day of May 1724 in the afternoon‘ suggests a map showing where the total eclipse will fall.

Pryer’s map is a copy of an earlier map with the same title by Herman Moll, from 1708. This map went through several editions and was copied, both legitimately and not, a number of times. It’s presumably Moll who has included a complaint against copyists in a piece of text on the map as another version of the map held at the Bodleian includes the note ‘This map has ben copied four times very confused and scandalousy’

‘Since ye beginning of this new sett of maps now completely finish’d, several ignorant pretenders have started up & with great shew & noise frequently advertised their trifling performances: calling them cheap, curious, useful & correct: as to the first epithet, they are really dear at any price; in ye 2d. place , everybody may see they are wild, confused and poorly engraven; as for their usefulness, they tend only to lead people into errors; and so far from being correct, that the projection of their principal maps is notoriously false’.

It is not recorded whether Pryer is one of Moll’s ‘Ignorant pretenders’, though the lack of any mention of Moll and his map makes it likely that Pryer used Moll without authority, though if so you do have to wonder why he would include the diatribe against unscrupulous publishers and cartographers if he was one himself.

The 1724 eclipse was well mapped. Another version by Edmund Halley also includes the path of a 1715 eclipse as well.

A description of the passage of the shadow of the Moon over England in the total eclipse of the Sun on the 11th day of May 1724 in the evening... Vet A4 a.13 (6) 1724

We know this map was published after the eclipse as text, presumably by Halley, alludes to earlier predictions on the path of the eclipse and how this map showed ‘the passage of the shade as it really happened; whereby it will appear that tho our numbers pretend not to be altogether perfect, yet the correction they need is very small’.

The doctrine of eclipses, with particular account of the great eclipse of the Sun & Earth which will happen the 11th of May 1724. Vet A4 a.13 (14) [1724]

The ‘earlier predictions’ can be found in a doctrine of eclipses printed, presumably, a few months before the map. As well as complex set of instructions and diagrams the doctrine also includes a perfect description of what an eclipse is, ‘An eclipse is the loss of light really, or in appearance, in any of the heavenly bodies, caused by interposition of one of the planets, and is either Solar, Stellar of Planetary’. The doctrine, which seems to have been published as a pamphlet, also includes a World map showing the path of the total eclipse.

Finally, the cover of an Ordnance Survey map showing where the path of the eclipse can be seen in England on the 29th June, 1927. The map shows levels of totality and times (an early start, as the eclipse started at 5 a.m.). Typical of Ordnance Survey maps of the time the cover is a delight.

Eclipse maps are amongst the most fascinating of the type, showing a celestial event where objects millions of miles away fall into line creating a magical event on Earth, an event made more interesting by the fact that through careful calculations, tables and records kept we can now accurately predict when and where these events will happen. Even though science has taken the mystery away to be in the path of a total eclipse is still a magical event.

*Halley was a man of many talents. As well as improving the records for the motions of the Sun and Moon crucial to predicting eclipses he also made accurate measurements of magnetic variations throughout the World, tried to establish the date of Stonehenge and, most famously, predicted the course of a comet that would come to bear his name. For a while Halley lived in a house close to the library where this blog was written, underneath Oxford’s version of the Bridge of Sighs.

The Sheldon Tapestries, Tudor masterpieces

In early September one of the library treasures, the Oxfordshire Sheldon tapestry, will be taken off display. One of a set of four there’s been a Sheldon tapestry on display in Blackwell Hall for the last ten years, a riot of colour and history which has drawn visitors to them and will be missed when no longer there.

The first tapestry on display, of Worcestershire, in Blackwell Hall. The Oxfordshire tapestry is currently on display in this space

Ralph Sheldon, a Warwickshire landowner, commissioned four tapestry maps centred on the counties of Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire and the map information was largely derived from the county maps of Christopher Saxton, first published in 1579. Two of the tapestries came to the Bodleian as part of the rich collection of prints, drawings, maps and other resources left to the library by the antiquarian Richard Gough in 1809, while the third, of Gloucestershire, was bought in 2007. The fourth tapestry, centred on Warwickshire, is in Warwickshire Museum in Warwick. It’s the only complete tapestry but has lost the wonderfully illustrated border that features on the Bodleian copies, which are richly decorated with classical images, maps and views.

Made from a mix of wool and silk the tapestries are both marvellous in their own right but are also important cartographic records, made at a time when England was beginning to be mapped properly for the first time. Each one would have originally measured approximately 15 by 20 feet and each has a ‘featured’ county at its centre, bordered in red. Rivers and settlements feature prominently as do scenes of local interest such as the Rollright Stones, a prehistoric stone circle in north Oxfordshire, or a brief bit of text on the Worcestershire tapestry telling of a land slip. Important houses are shown though none as big as Sheldon’s, Weston House, which appears on all four tapestries, the very centre of the area the tapestries show. And what an area, when put together as a set of maps the range goes from as far north as the suburbs of Birmingham down past a beautiful, though comically inaccurate, White Horse at Uffington and from the Welsh border across to the Tower of London the whole of central England is depicted in glorious detail.

Villages and towns are shown with houses, buildings and churches, many still recognizable today. No other map existed at the time showing the country in such detail, in such vivid colour, and no tapestries exist in this country from the Tudor period with a cartographic design on such a scale. Ralph Sheldon created a set of tapestries that not only kept his house decorated and warm but also showed off both his wealth and connections. With items as expensive to make such as these this was bling on a grand scale.

Before the tapestries were displayed, all three went to the National Trust’s textile conservation studio on the Blickling Estate in Norfolk, and from there preparation was made for cleaning, which would take place in one of the few places with facilities to clean tapestries of this size, the De Wit Royal Manufacturers in Mechelen, Belgium. Cleaning involved steaming and then rinsing the tapestries before drying out on large racks (to see this process in action see Conservation of our Sheldon tapestries | Bodleian Map Room Blog). Once cleaned the tapestries returned to the National Trust, where skilled conservators strengthened the stitching and sewed the pieces of the tapestries onto backing. The tapestries came back to us not only stronger and now secure the colours, faded before, are vibrant and it’s remarkable to think that these reds, yellows and greens have survived without too much fading for so long.  None of our tapestries are complete, all have various amounts of parts missing. Some we know were removed and given to others long before the tapestries were bought by Gough, the bottom right part of the Oxfordshire tapestry can be seen on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum for example, while insect damage has done for the remaining gaps.

The Oxfordshire tapestry, (R) Gough Maps 261, with the many gaps caused by insect and human interference

The tapestries remained in the Sheldon family until 1781, displayed, then stored, and in some cases copied for a later version. It’s a later version of our Oxfordshire tapestry which is on display in the Ashmolean Museum, a poor copy with faded colours and heavy weaving. Come in to see our original in its full glory before it’s too late.

Am interactive guide to the Oxfordshire tapestry can be found here The Sheldon Tapestry map of Oxfordshire

“Approaches to Valhalla”

Map – noun 1 a diagrammatic representation of an area of land or sea showing physical features, cities, roads, etc…

This description, from the Oxford English Dictionary, is what we all imagine when we think of a map, and when we look at that map we expect to see a location, whether a detailed town plan or country, continent or world, somewhere that exists both in reality and on paper.

Despite all this there are some outliers in the map world, maps of places that only exist in the mind, maps of imaginary lands. The Bodleian has a nice collection of these maps, of places as diverse as Ambridge, Middle Earth and Utopia, you can read more and see some here Imaginary lands. Within this genre there’s a nice offshoot, a type of map of a made-up place designed to be a guide to cartographers by showing how to portray certain features, or for the map reader to show what the symbols mean (see here and here).

Here’s an example, ‘Colours and symbols used on fair sheets and fair tracing’, issued by the Hydrographic Office of the Navy in 1973. Fair here meaning a document after correction, ready to be used. But is it fair? With this ‘made-up’ map the Hydrographic Office have used real names but in random locations, so Campania, in reality a region of Italy, features, as does the English county of Rutland (though as a town here) and a made-up mountain, Montrosia. Best of all is mention of “Approaches to Valhalla”. The map shows different forms of landscape, both natural and man-made with the symbols used to show those features, and the names are added to give the whole an authentic feel.

The text is laid out in a way similar to the Admiralty charts that this legend sheet is a companion to. Along with a title there is surveying information and notes on depths. But again here there is confusion, and the impression that the cartographers are having fun either at our expense or with a knowing wink if we’re in the know with naval lore and history. There’s no online record for a ‘Lieutenant-Commander R.J. Shackleton, Royal Navy’ so is this a nod to Ernest Shackleton, Royal Naval Lieutenant and Antarctic explorer? And the H.M. Survey Ship “Rattler”? There were a number of Naval ships called Rattler, the most famous built in 1843, one of the first to use a screw propeller.

Here’s a variation on a theme, created by the Canadian military for planning purposes during the Second World War. As with the Hydrographic Office map the topography looks real, but the names given don’t appear to be. The defences, in purple, seem too accurate, with notes saying ‘Third gun reported, but position unknown’, and then the note to the top, ‘This map is unreliable. It has been produced by enlargement from One inch to One miles maps…’.  The real location is Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

The lesson from looking at these maps is if you’re going to make up a place then why not use your imagination. Normal rules don’t apply, you aren’t restricted by actually portraying an existing place or, in the case of Admiralty charts, a coastline or depths. It seems that even in the confines of a serious military organization like the Admiralty there’s room for a bit of fun. The Admiralty still produces legends for their charts, but it’s fair to say that the romance has gone out of the product now.

Speed’s history lessons

John Speed (1552-1629) was a celebrated cartographer whose career spanned Tudor and Stuart Britain, from a stable Elizabethan age to a more turbulent time under James I. Speed’s great work is his atlas ‘The Theatre of the empire of Great Britaine: presenting an exact geography of the Kingdomes of England, Scotland, Ireland and the iles adoiyning…’ . It’s a work full of little vignettes and text to be found amongst his county maps, displaying both his love of history, the volatile times in which the atlas was made and the fact that it seems map-makers can’t abide any blank spaces in their work.

The title-page features five figures in British history, the rough and ready ancient Briton is followed by a Roman, Saxon, Dane then Norman, gradually getting grander with each passing historical phase.

There then follows a short introduction to the work, in which Speed states…And finally the Battels fought either by the forreaine or home-breed Conspirators, I have also added, Where we form under our own vines without fear may behold the prints of indured miseries, fealled with the blood of those times, to the losse of their lives, and liberites…

Here are a few examples of the historical decoration Speed includes in his county maps.

The first image comes from Sussex, and shows the Norman invasion fleet sailing towards Pemsey Harbour with ‘896 ships furnished for war’ in 1066. The famous outcome of the invasion was the Battle of Hastings, 14th October, 1066.

Speed tells us ‘And the 14 of October following, beyng saturdaye, nere Hastings…joyned in battle with Harold, King of England, whoe in ye fielde vallinatly fighting was there slaine by the shott of an arow into his braynes’.

It is fortunate that Speed includes text with these images, if he hadn’t some might be difficult to decipher, as is the case with this next image, from the ‘Hantshire’ county map.

The image shows the Empress Maud, daughter of Henry I, who in the mid 1100s was engaged in civil war with her cousin King Stephen over who should hold the crown. The image shows Maud (also called Matilda) escaping one battle in…well, let Speed explain ‘But success of warr altering Maud the Emperese to save her owne life adventured to throwe the host her enimie, layde in a coffin fayned to be dead, and soe was carryed in a horse litter from Winchester‘.

An unlikely looking Stonehenge appears in the Wiltshire county map, complete with tubular lintels and a hilly landscape. Speed tells us ‘This ancient monument was erected by Aurelius, surnamed Ambrious, King of the Brittaines, whose nobility in the raigne of Vortiger (his countryes scrouge) about ye yere of Christ 475 by treachy of ye Saxons, on a day of parleye were there slaughtered and their bodeyes there interred. In memory whereof this King Aurel caused this trophy to be set up‘.

Speed loved a battle scene, especially, judging by how many there are in his atlas, massed ranks of men wielding pikes. Here’s an image from his Norfolk county map, with text describing rebellions in 1381 and 1549.

This dramatic image is of a battle between Jasper, Earl of Pembroke, and James Butler Earl Ormerod against Edward, Earl of March, 1461, in Herefordshire. ‘Where in befor the battell was strok, appeared visibly in the firmament three sunnes; wihch after a while joyned all together and became as before‘. And, at the bottom, is this a glimpse of Speed at work? Surviving portraits, see below, suggest it could be.

Finally from Gloucestershire a double image, with the top picture showing the hand-to-hand combat between ‘Canut the Dane’ and Edmund Ironside following numerous battles between the two. With no outcome from the fight they ‘accorded to parte ye kingdome which they joyntly governed, till treason took away the lyfe of King Edmund and left ye Dane sole monarch’.

The second battle is from Tewkesbury, 1471, fought between King Edward IV and King Henry VI. This is the first appearance of guns in war in the atlas.

These are just a small selection of images in Speed’s remarkable atlas. A large number of the county maps have pictures of groups of men wielding swords, pikes or ancient rifles. These images reflect both Speed’s fascination with history and the nature of history in the British Isles up to 1611, which was largely one of conquest, invasion or fights for supremacy. Speed’s atlas was available in a number of different formats. Printing was done in black and white with options to have prints then coloured, either just outlining the county (cheaper) or the whole sheet fully coloured (more expensive). The atlas could also be bought bound or unbound. The Bodleian has a number of bound atlases, all in black and white, and some loose maps in colour.

Here’s a sheet covering Bedfordshire showing borders coloured (Gough Maps Bedfordshire 5, from a 1743 reprint including roads, not on Speed’s original) and then Oxfordshire in with the Oxford map in colour ((E) C17:49 (116), 1627 .

Both maps are an improvement on the achievements of the Tudor cartographer Christopher Saxton in both their detail and decoration. Speed included in all his county maps plans of the county towns, which would have been amongst the earliest, if not the earliest, of maps for each location.

Do these images add to the quality of the maps? No, not really, but they do add to the history of the particular county, giving a depth of knowledge to the place, an extra level of understanding, not found in other county maps both before and after.

John Speed The Theatre of Great Britaine: presenting an exact geography of the Kingdomes of England, Scotland, Ireland and the iles adoiyning…’ 1611. Map Res 74.

This map is made very false

Held within the collections here at the Bodleian is a green scrapbook. There’s no clue inside about when the material was gathered together, the only information we have about the material comes from the shelfmark, Wood 276 b. The Wood tells us this is part of a donation of over 900 books left to the Ashmolean Museum, then transferred to the Bodleian, by Anthony Wood (1632-1695), an antiquarian and collector mainly of material relating to Oxford.

The scrapbook features a range of different items; starting with a number of World and country maps by cartographers such as John Speed and Abraham Ortelius the volume also includes plans of the hot and cold baths in Bath, portraits of Oxford dons and religious pamphlets. At roughly halfway through is a map of Oxford, probably the most frustrating we have in the collection.

Oxforde as it now lyeth fortified by his Ma.ties forces an. 1644 is a strange map on a number of levels. Its mixture of scales is off-putting, a large Oxford looms at the top of the Thames running down past smaller representations of Abingdon (‘Abbington’), Wallingford and Reading (‘Reding’) like the head of a carnivorous plant and then there’s the depiction of city itself, with soldiers between the city and siege walls larger than the buildings inside the city. And what to make of the note written in the bottom corner, ‘This map is made very false’, possibly by Wood himself. Not what you want to read when looking for accuracy.

The reason for the map’s overall design is easy to explain. Oxford was a key location in the Civil War, soon after the start in 1642 King Charles I was forced out of London by Parliamentary forces and settled in the city, taking over, along with his Queen and entourage, a number of colleges. This move proved disastrous; resources such as college silver and lead from roofs were stripped and melted down for coins and bullets, the amount of people coming into the city led to over-crowding and a number of dangerous fires and, worse of all, with the King in town the city quickly came under siege. Abingdon, Wallingford and Reading were important towns on the Thames, vital for the success of the Royalists during the War for their strategic value but by the time the map was made all three had either fallen to Parliamentary forces or soon would do so.

It is because of this way of showing Oxford in relation to the three towns that causes the problem with the map, and the reason for the handwritten note at the bottom. All existing maps of the city prior to the war had south at the top, but by including the towns to the south Oxford needed to be shown with a north orientation. To achieve this our unnamed cartographer has taken an earlier, southern orientated, map of the city and seemingly flipped round the orientation. So now, without looking too closely, all seems ok, with the two largest features on the map, the castle and Magdalen Bridge, to the west and east respectively of the city, as they should be.

We’re pretty confident we know how this has been achieved. The earlier map mentioned is the map of Oxford from John Speed’s county map of Oxfordshire, 1611, we know this because the Civil War map uses Speed’s legend and key to identify buildings. Speed has south at the top and it looks like to change this around our cartographer has held a mirror up to the edge of the map and reproduced what he sees. Here’s Speed from his 1611 map, next to what you would see in a mirror.

The problem with doing this though is the flip in orientation only works horizontally. Everything inside the city walls has stayed where they originally were so everything is now upside down. Take for example T, which is at the top of both Speed and the Civil War maps. The T is Christ Church college, which is on the road leading south out of the city on your left as you go past it, on the map it’s both on the wrong side of the road and in the north. The question is, has this been done deliberately, is this an attempt by besieged forces to confuse the enemy? This seems unlikely, Speed’s maps were well known so it’s doubtful that many would have been fooled by the deception. Which leaves one other suggestion. This is just a badly made map, hastily put together using a method not properly thought through. ‘Very false’ indeed.

Anthony Wood is one of those historical characters that more is known about his ways than his achievements. A born and bred Oxford man he grew up during the Civil War, living through the siege and fires that entailed. Wood produced a number of histories of the city and the university, one of which, the Historia et Antiquitates Universtatis Oxoniensis included what is regarded as the best portrayal of the city, David Loggan’s beautifully engraved map of 1675, which includes some of the Civil War defences (and has south at the top!)

Wood often worked with the antiquarian and collector John Aubrey who described Wood, who by this time liked to be called Anthony à Wood, as ‘a shiftless person, roving and maggoty-headed and sometimes a little better than crazed’. Others were less complimentary with one stating that he ‘was always looked upon in Oxford as a most egregious, illiterate, dull blockhead, a conceited, impudent coxcomb’.

‘Oxforde as it now lyeth…’ is just one of a number of beautiful and interesting maps at the Bodleian written by members of the maps team https://bodleianshop.co.uk/collections/all-books/products/treasures-from-the-map-room It’s nearly Christmas after all…

Death by numbers

What we now call trench maps are an organized set of maps at a detailed scale which start on the coast either side of the French and Belgian border and go, numerically, in a north-west to south-east flow down through France and Belgium. Using pre-war French and Belgian maps as a reference these maps show an idealized landscape long since fought over and largely destroyed. Overlaying the topographical information are the trenches of of both the British and German armies, facing each other of what was often a very narrow strip of no-man’s land. German trenches were shown in full while almost always only the front-line of the British trenches would be included for security reasons*.

Fonquevillers, 57D N.E., sheets 1 & 2 (parts of) Feb 1917 C1 (3) [1449]

This map has the village of Monchy au Bois at the top, and is dated to a time between the Battles of the Somme and Arras, with ‘trenches corrected to 27-12-16’, and this sheet is edition 4a. In total there were ten different editions of this sheet made between September 1915 and November 1916, a demand on map production made possible by the Ordnance Survey providing mobile printing presses behind the front-line. The maps show an ordered topographic representation of a pre-war landscape, with villages laid out, streets, churches and countryside. In reality the village would be a ruin, as can be seen in this image from the Imperial War Museum (Image: IWM (Q 61260) of the village in June 1917

THE BRITISH ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONT, 1914-1918 (Q 61260) A British soldier in the ruins of the village of Monchy-au-Bois, 30 June 1917. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205308715

The main purpose of the maps was to give artillery positions behind the lines accurate co-ordinates for firing on enemy positions, often from information given to them by forward observation posts. Maps would be gridded, areas separated into smaller areas by a designated letter, then each square within the lettered area numbered. These squares were then divided by a broken line into 4, a,b,c and d. Finally, to give as accurate a reference as possible, ‘tick lines’ are included around the edge of the square, 10 on each line. Using this system would give a simple but highly accurate point of reference for artillery to work on.

This is how most trench maps work. Occasionally though an extra help to identify location was given on a map. Key positions would be numbered in red circles. These positions would be at junctions or corners of trenches, areas where troop movements would slow down and soldiers would inevitably bunch up. In a calculated way artillery fire would be targeting areas which would give the maximum casualties amongst enemy forces for the minimum shell use. These are extracts from the trench map showing the grid system in place and then the circled numbers at the points of junctions.

*Here’s an example of a trench map with both British and German trenches, La Bassėe, sheet 44a N.W. 1, 1918. With the extra trenches these maps become more than just an historical record of the course of a battle at a particular time. With named trenches they are part of the social history of the First World War as well.

The itinerary of Jan Huygen van Linschoten

Maps come in all sorts of formats and sizes, and they also come in all sorts of different mediums as well; globes, atlases and single sheets. As well as these early printed maps are often to be found in itineraries, those wonderful descriptions of early exploration, full of tales of new lands, new people, new customs. It was often in these itineraries that readers would first see in illustrations the strange new sights that they may have only heard about previously – imagine being told what an elephant looked like, and then seeing a picture of one – and the maps, though important in themselves as cartographic records, were more often than not secondary to the written narrative and illustrations.

One such itinerary is in the office at the moment. Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563-1611) was, as it seems with a lot of people we read about from these times, a bit of a polymath. Dutch merchant, traveller, writer and, intriguingly, a spy as well. Spy because he travelled extensively through Portuguese areas of influence in the Far East, especially around the Spice Islands of Indonesia, and then wrote about his travels in a book published in 1596, Itinerario, voyage ofte schipvaert, van Ian Huygen van Linschoten naer Oost ofte Portugaels Indien inhoudende een corte beschryvinghe der selver landen ende zee-custen… (Itinerary, voyage or navigation, of Ian Huygens from Linschoten to the East or Portuguese Indies containing a short description of the same lands and sea coasts…).

Here’s a beautiful double hemisphere World map from the start of the book with representations of the 4 continents in the corners. The map is by Jan Baptista Vrient, a Dutch geographer and cartographer.

There are a number of regional maps throughout the work, the most important considering what Linschoten’s work was dealing with was of the Far East, and the Spice Islands. The itinerary pre-dates the Dutch influence in the region but only by a few years, and the work had an influence on Dutch ambitions in the region. By the early 1600s the Dutch had started to gain control of the spice trade with the setting up of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the Dutch East India company in 1602.

As can be seen these are beautiful maps, hand-coloured and for the time accurate depictions of the regions shown.

As well as maps the books contain illustrations of flora and fauna, people and customs. Here’s a page showing different fruit trees (bamboo, mangrove and durian)

Another page has illustrations of temples and religious practises, including a pagoda and a mosque.

Itineraries have a long history, dating back to classical times in the form of a periplus, a list of destinations on a journey which would often then be expanded by Greek and other writers into more general histories through to itineraries like the one in this blog to works on travel writing as a form of social commentary (such as Daniel Defoe’s ‘Tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain’ (1724)) on to the current trend for travel writing as a form of entertainment. Linschoten’s itinerary is a wealth of information and illustrations of the people, customs, trade and geography of the Far East. It’s just one of a number of books he wrote in the 1590s about the region and of the voyage to get there along the east coast of Africa. An English translation was published in 1598.

And here’s our spy, looking quite dapper in his ruff and whiskers. It’s wonderful to imagine the adventures and sights seen by Linschoten on his travels.

Italian maps from the Eastern front

We’ve written about Stalingrad before, maps showing different aspects of a battle which was a turning point in the Second World War, but a recent donation of maps to the library are of sufficient importance to warrant a new piece to add to these blogs on thematic mapping and name changes.

The maps are German army maps, mostly at 1:1,000,000 scale but almost all have manuscript annotations added to show the progress, positions and then retreat of the Italian 8th Army. The area covered is mainly northern Ukraine, generally from Crimea across to Stalingrad and north as far as Minsk. Front-lines, troop deployment, strength of remaining forces, depots and command centres are all shown, and as most of the maps are dated progress day by day can often be plotted.

German, Italian and Romania advances towards Stalingrad, 15th July 1942 (?), C40:6 (181) 1a

These maps are of historical importance. As well as Italian forces armies from Croatia, Hungary and Romania were on the Eastern Front but the main focus on Stalingrad has mostly been on the vast number of German troops that fought on the Eastern Front. These maps will go some way to shine a light on the other forces involved on the Axis side.

Soviet counterattacks and Stalingrad pocket, circa 9th Jan 1943, C40:6 (181) 1a

The maps are also amongst the most poignant in the collection. These maps show Axis forces advance from the Don with front-lines moving closer to the Volga before coming to a stop at Stalingrad. Then, with the launch of Operation Uranus in November 1942 Soviet forces push back Axis forces, and the front-line moves back towards the Don, the pocket around Stalingrad slowly diminishes along with the numbers of troops shown behind the retreating lines, until finally the pocket disappears and the words ‘Resti 6th Army‘ are crossed out in red pencil (Resti means ‘remains’ in Italian).

Stalingrad pockets, circa 13th Jan and 30th Jan, 1943. C40:6 (181) 1a

4th Feb 1943 C40:6 (181) 1

Maps such as these are rare in libraries such as the Bodleian. By their nature annotated maps made during war-time are often lost or irreparably damaged in the confusion of battle, especially when that battle involves a retreat such as the one involving the troops featured on the maps. We’re lucky to have such an important collection come to Oxford.

Good fences make good neighbours

In Robert Frost’s poem Mending wall two neighbours walk the shared boundaries of their properties, checking on the condition of the wall separating their land and making repairs where necessary. At one point the narrator teases his neighbour on the need for the wall, “My apple trees will never come across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him”. The neighbour replies, simply and memorably, “Good fences make good neighbours”.

Frost loves the phrase so much that it’s repeated again, to close the poem*, and I’m reminded of this when looking at these two estate maps, of Down Manor from 1718 and Mowden Hall, 1762, both in Essex. Both are typical examples of an estate plan, are in manuscript form and show the holdings and field names of each estate (with sizes in acres, roods and perches). The connection with Frost comes with both showing boundaries in two different colours, according to ownership and according to responsibility of maintenance, to mark the outer boundaries of each estate. Any boundary dispute in the future would be easily settled with reference to the map. The importance of boundary fences are obvious, the need to keep animals out of certain fields and in others, as a way of separating good land from not so good and as a way of marking the limit of your land from your neighbour. The Down Manor map nicely calls the fencing surrounding the property ‘Out fencing’.

A by-product of this in both maps is that those neighbours surrounding both Down Manor and Mowden Hall are named, so for instance we can see that the wonderfully named Mr Grump owed land to the south-east of Mowden Hall and the equally well-named Thomas Clutterbuck owed land just north of Down Hall, giving us a connection with those alive at the time the map was made.

Estate maps show the land owned by the local manor or estate, and are almost always privately commissioned works, which often lead to beautiful one-off maps such as the Down Manor map. These maps are historically important as they give a pre-enclosure view of the landscape and a record of who farmed this landscape. One of the most famous of all the estate maps is held in the Bodleian, of Laxton in Nottinghamshire, from 1635. We tell its story here and we’ve blogged previously about estate maps here, here, and here.

Most of the field names are explanatory, sometimes just size or use (Gravel Pit Field, Calves Pasture and so on) but some are more interesting. Great and Little Hungerdown in the Mowden map would suggest a poor field for growing crops on and needing much manure and feeding to make viable, while Bury Mead is a field near a moat or fortified building and Rushey pasture would be a poorly drained field, not much good for growing crops but ok for growing rushes, useful in chair making and hatching.

The Mowden map was first surveyed in 1723 by Daniel Halls, who is described in a dictionary of surveyors at the Bodleian as a Philomath in the year he surveyed the map. A Philomath is someone who loves learning. Halls’ map was then copied, the term used on the map is ‘diminish’d’, by Edward John Eyre in 1762. The owner of Mowden Hall, Brabezon Aylmer, also owed the paper mill near but outside his main land-holding. We can tell he owns the mill because the land included with the mill is delineated by the yellow line that the legend tells us ‘that the fence in the outward bounds of this map where it belongs to this estate is coloured with yellow…’.

A true map of the lands belonging to Mowden Hall together with a paper mill as they are situate lying and being in the several parishes of Ulting, Hatfield, Boreham & Little Baddow, Essex, belonging to Brabzon Aylmer, esq…1762. MS C17:28 (40)

Description of the Manor of Down Hall, situate and lying in the Parish of Rayleigh in the County of Essex. Containing altogether 170 acres, 1 rood and 2 perches being parcel of the possession of Edw. Downs Esq. and herein particularly measured in the year of our Lord 1718 by Will. Cole. 1718. MS C17:28 (88)

*Frost’s poem can be read here, it’s worth it Mending Wall | The Poetry Foundation

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.