Category Archives: Britain

Found in a box

 

Looking through a box of uncatalogued maps, plots and diagrams I came across several manuscript architectural plans of the Midland Grand Hotel, London. Now named the St Pancras Hotel it is an iconic landmark on the Euston Road next to that other celebrated edifice of red brick, the British Library. The plans, drawn to show the girders, were by engineer Richard Moreland of Old Street in 1867 at a scale of 10 feet to 1 inch (1:120). You can see all of the modern internal features with the Grand Staircase and the popular Ladies Coffee Room. There are even manuscript pencil marks denoting dimensions which indicate these were some sort of working drawings.


The hotel is a masterpiece of high Gothic designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott who beat ten other architects for the commission, even though his design was far bigger and far more expensive that Midland Railway Company specified. The competition was launched in 1865 for a 150 bed hotel but it was finally completed in 1876 with 300 rooms. With its very high standard of fixtures and fittings the Midland Grand soon acquired a reputation as a luxurious upmarket hotel – even better than the celebrated Langham in Portland Place. This luxury didn’t come cheap costing nearly £500,000 to construct it charged the sum of 14 shilling a night – an average week’s wages for an agricultural labourer.

MS. Maps Eng. a. 3 (1)

Land ahoy!

Although this is the time of year when the lights are lengthening and electronic location devices are almost mandatory, shipping still benefits from the presence of lighthouses warning of hazards. The Chart exhibiting the light houses and light vessels on the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland; and also those on the N.W. coasts of Europe between Ushant and Bergen was created by A. G. Findlay in 1863 and shows the location, extent of the beam of each lighthouse, and gives information about the type of beam and frequency of light pulses. This wealth of information is exquisitely engraved and coloured but as a specialist map it would not have had a large print run. However it is a handsome thing mounted on linen and folded into covers with brass decorative gothic clasps. The boards of the covers are covered in cloth with a blind stamped decoration and the title, motto and coat of arms of Trinity House in gilt.


The map was published ‘By order of the hon[oura]ble. the Corporation of Trinity House.’ which is the authority controlling lighthouses, lightvessels and buoys in England and Wales, Channel Islands and Gibraltar (Northern Lighthouse Board in Scotland). The board was established by a charter granted by Henry VIII in 1514. Prior to this there were privately run beacons or towers so it wasn’t until 1609 Trinity House established its first, Lowestoft Lighthouse, as a pair of wooden towers with candle illuminants. The risk of fire must have been very great but it wasn’t until 1777 the first mirrored reflectors were used.


The cartographer of this map, Alexander George Findlay was a leading compiler and publisher of geographical and hydrographical works and after the death of Richard Holland Laurie, took over the well-known and long established printing house of Laurie & Whittle. He researched meteorology, published nautical directories the whole world and received a Society of Arts medal for his dissertation The English Lighthouse. He also served the British Association for the Advancement of Science so he was uniquely qualified to produce this map.


Today lighthouses are still relevant but function more as a back up to electronic equipment. The last manned lighthouse, North Foreland in Kent, was automated in 1998 after the automation process started in in the early 1980s, bringing to an end the work of the lighthouse keepers or “wickies”. This lighthouse had seen the departures of forces defending our islands and the arrival of all manner of vessels – some in joyous homecoming, some limping back after difficult journeys and trade vessels from all over the world. Trinity house currently maintains 65 lighthouses but it has provided temporary lighting. For D-Day it laid 73 lighted buoys and 2 lightvessels to indicate a safe route for landing craft in the poor weather of the English Channel. Redundant lighthouses have been re-purposed as holiday lets or even conversion to domestic properties – albeit ones with fantastic views!

Chart exhibiting the light houses and light vessels on the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland; and also those on the N.W. coasts of Europe between Ushant and Bergen. London, 1863. C15 d.197

The Grand Junction Railway

This is one of the earliest Railway maps held in the Bodleian. Dating from 1839 the map shows the route of the Grand Junction Railway which at the time of the map ran from Birmingham north to join up with the Liverpool to Manchester Railway, a journey of 82 miles.

Drake’s map of the Grand Junction Railway, 1839. (E) C17:5 (18)

As well as showing the route the map also has a distance chart showing the miles from Birmingham and, important from the point of view of having as flat and level a route as possible, a height profile. The map also has a lovely vignette just underneath the title of a train in motion. Maps started to feature railways at the start of the 1800s but these were horse-drawn. The first steam powered engine, George Stephenson’s Locomotion,  was on  the Stockton to Darlington Railway in 1825.

While the Library has a large number of railway maps the Drake is one of the few we have that comes with a timetable. Included on Drake’s Railway Sheet of the Grand Junction… is information

on fares and times along the route. A first class journey from Birmingham to Liverpool would cost 21 shillings (approximately £60, a first-class ticket today is twice this amount) and take four and a half hours. There is also another picture of an engine and first and second class carriages and cattle (horses cost 2 shillings).

 

Playing with maps

The idea that playing cards could be illustrated with maps is a bit surprising, since maps tend to be on fairly large pieces of paper, and most playing cards are pretty small. However, early playing cards were often designed to be decorative and to serve an educational purpose as well as being for card games. So geographical subjects could feature, and these sometimes included maps.

The 39 historic counties of England, and 13 of Wales, together make up the convenient number 52 – the same as the number of cards in a standard pack. This perhaps inspired the first known example of geographical playing cards, a set made in England featuring all the counties, by the mysterious “W.B.” in 1590. Few of these survive and the Bodleian doesn’t hold any. The card maker is believed to be a W. Bowes, probably related to Ralph Bowes who received a monopoly to import playing cards in 1578, but attempts to identify this individual and establish a more precise relationship have been unsuccessful.


In 1676 the mapmaker Robert Morden issued a set of playing cards with maps of all the counties, each one showing a reasonable amount of detail for an area a little over 5cm square. Each little county map shows the main towns, roads, major rivers, and a scale bar, and is accompanied by information on the length, breadth and circumference of the county, and latitude of the main town and its distance from London. Small changes to the plates show that the set was reissued at least twice by 1680; the names of adjacent counties were not on the original version. The maps were also sold bound as a small atlas without suit marks. They were copied and the set issued again by John Lenthall, a playing card seller, around 1717. There was even a later version of the same set published in the 1780s, nearly a hundred years after they first appeared. The cards illustrated above are both from Lenthall’s issue of the cards.

 

Later in the same year that Morden issued his first set of county playing cards, William Redmayne published a competing set. The maps are very small and poorly drawn, and the suit marks (positioned in the middle of the cards) almost obscure the maps. They do however have more extensive text, with facts about the geography and history of the counties included. Differences in style between suits suggest that more than one engraver was involved, so perhaps the set was produced in a hurry. Despite the limitations of the maps, these must have sold reasonably well as a second set with minor changes came out the following year; again John Lenthall acquired the plates and issued a set some time in the 1710s. Lenthall sold many packs of cards of different designs; contemporary advertisements show that he had over 40 packs for customers to choose from. The cards shown above, from Redmayne’s second issue of the set, show the difference in style and in the amount of written information between cards.
Geographical cards with maps of countries around the world also existed, with the 4 continents then known to Europeans (Africa, Asia, Americas, Europe) serving as the 4 suits. But maps of the English counties seem to have been particularly popular. The maps shown are from the Bodleian’s John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera; the shelfmark is Douce Playing Cards (12c).

There is a detailed analysis of map playing cards of this type published by the Map Collectors’ Circle (“Playing cards depicting maps of the British Isles, and of English and Welsh counties,” by Sylvia Mann and David Kingsley. Map Collectors’ Series No. 87, 1972)

 

The battle of the Medway 1667

This is a remarkable map of a remarkable event. Interleaved amongst Naval papers and letters to and from Samuel Pepys in a volume of manuscripts is a drawing by another noted diarist, John Evelyn, of one of the few examples of enemy action on British soil since 1066, the attack on the River Medway in 1667 by the Dutch.

 

The volume of papers is part of the Rawlinson collection. Antiquary Richard Rawlinson (1690-1755) donated to the Bodleian over 5,000 manuscripts and nearly 1,800 books on such subjects as theology, literature and history.  Evelyn was a contemporary of Samuel Pepys and his diary, which he wrote for most of his life though not to the detail of Pepys’s shorter work, was first published in 1818. This map by Evelyn is included in the collection of Pepys manuscripts because of Pepys’s role in the Navy, first as an administrator and then, from 1673, as Secretary. The raid was part of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, fought between the two nations from 1665 to 1667 to gain the upper hand in trade and World dominance. Between the 11th and the 13th of June Dutch ships sailed into the Medway, firing on Chatham and Sheerness and sinking a number of British ships.

This is an extract of the area around Rochester and Chatham                                                        Yard.  The dotted line between ships 2 and 3 and 7 and 8 is a heavy chain laid across the river to prevent the Dutch breaking through, a measure which failed, allowing the Dutch fleet to sail on and attack the British fleet at will. Ships 12 to 14; the Royal Oak, the Loyal London and the Royal James, were all burnt while the flagship, the HMS Royal Charles (10) was captured and towed back to the Netherlands.

The map is a sketch in pen and ink and there is a letter from Evelyn to Pepys with the map. Dated the 20th of June the letter starts ‘I am heartily ashamed I could not performe yr command before now. It was Friday ere I could possibly get home, and find I am here. I have been so afflicted with ye gripping of the guts that I was not able to bestow the pains intended on the scheme I send you…’A later map of the Essex coast, made in 1686 by Capt. Grenvil Collins, is dedicated to Pepys and features as part of the cartouche a small picture of a battle at sea (posted on this blog in January 2016).

 

 

Extract from Harwich, Woodbridg and Handfordwater with the sands from the Nazeland to Hoseley Bay…1686.   (E) C17:28 (46)

A few pages after this map is a letter Pepys wrote to the Earl of Sandwich when the Earl was Ambassador to Spain in 1667. Pepys often used code when writing his diary, and it is interesting to see that this skill was also important in his official role.

Lord Sandwich was a friend and supporter of Pepys. Sandwich died on board ship during a future War with the Dutch in 1672.

‘ A scheme of the posture of the Dutch Fleet and action at Sher-ness and Chatham, 10th 11th & 12th of June 1667, taken upon the place’. 1667. MS Rawlinson a 195a fol 78

“Mad Jack’s” map

On days like this it is a real privilege to do my job.  This rather lovely manuscript map from around 1795 has been recently purchased to enrich our holdings of large scale parish maps and estate plans but a happy time was spent cataloguing it.

The map is of part of the parishes of Berwick and Alciston north west of Eastbourne in East Sussex showing the lands belonging to “Jn. Fuller Esq.” This gentleman known at the time as “Mad Jack” Fuller (although he preferred “Honest John” Fuller) inherited his estate, Rose Hill, from his uncle in 1777. It is lands attached to this estate, which is now Brightling Park, which feature on the map.

Unfortunately the surveyor is not known nonetheless it is a pretty thing with beautiful penmanship and little vignettes of people and items likely to be found on the land.  The little details are charming: the field gates are drawn in as is a view of the church and the compass rose is embellished with gilt. The lands belonging to “Mad Jack” are numbered to a key giving field names and acreages with the remaining parcels of land having their owners names and areas scribed on them. The scale of approximately 1:10,000 (6” to 1 mile) is large enough to show the area in reasonable detail. It was obviously a working document as you can see many later corrections and additions in pencil, as well as the surveyor’s grid.  The fact that it has been produced on parchment also point to the fact it was heavily used, as paper wouldn’t be up to the task. 

John Fuller was born into a wealthy family of iron makers and politicians in Hampshire in 1757 and initially forged a career in a light infantry company in the Sussex Militia. He subsequently spent two spells in parliament as an MP, the first representing Southampton from 1780 to 1784 and then as member for Sussex from 1801 to 1812. A noted drunk, he was famous for his eccentricities and follies and even received permission to build a 20ft high pyramid as a tomb in the churchyard of St Thomas à Becket in Brightling. In later life he turned to philanthropy, supporting among others the young Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution. He died in April 1834 and was buried beneath his pyramid folly.

A survey of lands lying in ye parishes of Berwick and Alciston in the county of Sussex belonging to Jn. Fuller Esq. Rose Hill 

MS. C17:58 (114)

That’s a relief

First day back at work (happy new year btw) made more enjoyable by cataloguing and adding to the collection a set of U.S. Army relief maps of the British Isles.

sheet NO 30-10 covering the Grampians and Ben Nevis

Produced by the Army Map Service of the United States in1956 the plastic sheets have been pressed onto a raised model thus creating a relief image. On the back of the sheet you get the image in reverse. Due to the cut-off for heights shown in relief there are a number of sheets covering the Central and Southern parts of England that have no raised relief at all. Here is the reverse of the Isle of Arran. Relief maps such as these are a joy to look at but troublesome to store, as they can’t take too much weight on them for obvious reasons. Given a normal shelf mark for maps of the British Isles this interesting series will be stored in a box to protect the sheets from being damaged. All together there are 38 sheets at a scale of 1:250,000.

When joined together (as well as possible due to the large marginalia, and with the top north-eastern part missing) Ireland looks like this

 

While when photographed in profile the coast and peninsulas of Cork looks like this

Britain’s highest peaks are all represented; Sca Fell Pike (978 metres/3,209 feet), Ben Nevis (1,345m/4,411ft), Snowdon (1,085 m/3,560ft) and Carrauntoohil (1,038 m/3,407ft)

 

while other famous hills and ranges also feature, such as the Cullin Hills of Skye

and the smaller but impressive due to their high position in a low-lying area, Malverns

British Isles, Series M5216P, 1956. C15 (68)

 

 

A railway guide from this world to the next

‘The object of this guide is to afford an accurate description of the various competing lines from Time to Eternity, as well as of the country through which they pass; to instruct all passengers in a familiar, sometimes humourous, but always sober and rational manner; and thereby to assist the judgement in the choice of lines, so as to ensure safe and expeditious travelling. It is designed not only for travellers by rail, but for all without distinction’.

 

The guide mentioned in the introduction to ‘The new railway guide, or thoughts for thinkers on the road from this World to the next’ is a small 32 page book which accompanies one of the strangest maps in the Bodleian. By taking different paths from the ‘City of the World’ the traveller can find themselves either in the land of Glory or Perdition either by going through the countries of ‘Holylivingshire’ and Sanctificationshire’, or the lands of ‘Follyshire’ or ‘Evilhabitshire’. Both journeys first have to go through the rather unpleasant sounding ‘Natural Depravityshire’ , a land of swamps and strange creatures that adhere themselves to the carriages. There are 6 lines that leave the City of the World for Perdition; ignorance, superstition, infidelity, hypocrisy, fashion and intemperance lines. These are matched by the lines that leave for Glory; Popery,  Protestant, Independent, Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Methodist lines.

 

Despite the comic aspect to the map and the title there is a clear moral message to take from the book, which is set out early in the text. ‘The accompanying map…affords a general view of the country through which the lines pass from time to eternity. There is constant traffic between the two places; and as the reader will probably have to pass at some period from the one to the other, he will do well to cast his eye over the map beforehand’.

 

Maps such as this are a common feature in books of the time, either travel guides, battlefield guides or books on history. This map has been cleverly designed to give, along with the accompanying text, the illusion of a real place with religious instruction and moral guidance the intended destination.

The guide then goes onto describe the countries passed through to the two destinations, giving the good points on one hand, the bad on the other. The book and map have been designed to look like  standard railway guide of the time. Information is given on the quality of the carriages, gauges, prices and times of each different line as well as details of the various countries passed through. This closely mirrors authentic railway guides of the time, as can be seen from the examples here, taken from Fowler’s Railway Traveller’s Guide from circa 1840

 

The new railway guide, or thoughts for thinkers on the road from this World to the next…accompanied by an accurate map of the principal competing lines. 1848, 48.1515

 

 

A Victorian view of the World

This colourful and informative view of the World from 1882 is a classic example of a Victorian map. Famous battles, races of the World, information on the stars and hemispheres, lengths of rivers, heights of mountains are just some of the examples of information shown in what would have been intended primarily as a school map.

In the four corners are shown famous explorers, Columbus and Cook at top, Livingstone and Humboldt below while between there is a double hemisphere map showing the countries of the World, ocean currents and shipping routes.

This double hemisphere map also manages to include graphics showing the highest mountains and longest rivers as well as a map of the Solar System. The map also shows the natives of the World, with written descriptions of various races

as well as a diagram rather grandly titled ‘The Universal Time Dial Plate’ showing the different time zones of various cities throughout the World compared to London.

Text fills the spaces where there are no maps or pictures, telling us of the different races in the World, the way the Solar System works and the shape and size of the Earth. This is a map full of information and gives a real sense of what the Victorian world-view was. Just think how a child’s imagination would have been fired by seeing this in the classroom every day.

The Pictorial View of the World, 1882. B1 (261)

Fire

Blandford Forum is a market town in north-east Dorset. The attractive Georgian architecture and the neat lay-out of the centre of the town are the result of a devastating fire that started on the 4th of June 1731. This map, printed soon after, dramatically shows the condition of the town in the immediate aftermath of the blaze, all the dark shaded buildings were destroyed leaving few still standing. The box at the bottom tells the story. Starting in a tallow chandlers house (A on map) at 2pm the fire soon spread to the houses between the chandler’s house and the church (B)  before spreading to the properties across the road. The text ends ‘The church by the care of some of the inhabitants was preserved till about 11 at night tho’ the spire which was now covered with lead took fire within side about 4 in the afternoon which was soon extinguish’d but the fire flying over and thro’ it at every crevice, some sparks whereof lay latent till about 2 in the morning, then broke out in the middle isle under the lead, where ’twas impossible to extinguish it without engines which were already burnt many hours before, & the inhabitants so tired with much fatagues that before morning ye church was entirely destroyed ye poor remains being scarcely fit for a foundation’.

A plan of the town of Blandford with the adjacent villages of Briantstone & Blandford St Mary describing the damages in each place by the dreadfull fire which happened there on 4th of June 1731 [1731?]. Gough Maps Dorset 8

Fires, and the damaged caused, do give the opportunity for re-developing, for improving road lay-out, building material and sanitation. The creators of this map, the rather unfortunately named Bastard brothers, were also the local architects, and they rebuilt Blandford with a new and improved market place, school and church. The new layout can be seen in this image of the town taken from the first edition of the Ordnance Survey, from 1888

Sheet Dorset XXV 7, 1st ed Ordnance Survey, 1888

The most famous of urban fires though is the Great Fire of London, which fanned out of Pudding Lane late in the evening of the 2nd of September 1666 and soon consumed most of the buildings within the old walls, as these maps of the damage show.

A map or groundplot of the citty of London and the suburbs thereof, that is to say all which is within the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor…which is exactly demonstrated the present condition thereof, since the last sad accident of fire. The blanke space signifeing the burnt part & where the houses are exprest those places yet standing. 1666. Gough Maps London 7

London has a long and painful history of great fires, from the destruction caused by Boudicca in AD 61 to accidental fires in 961, 1087, 1135 1299, 1444, 1561 1619, 1698, 1716, 1725, 1748, 1814, 1834, 1838, 1861, 1874, 1882, 1917 and 1936, and these are just the major fires, there have been many smaller but damaging accidents as well.

Several propositions and schemes were offer’d the rebuild the City of London after the great fire 1666…1666. Gough Maps London 11

The above is one of many different designs for the rebuilding of the city after the great fire. Proposed by Valentine Knight the scheme called for a rigid street pattern but with a greater amount of water in the shape of a canal flowing through the city. This map was printed a remarkable 18 days after the fire started. Despite further plans submitted by such notable figures as Sir Christopher Wren in the end a design based on the old lay-out was implemented, but with greater distances between houses and set rules on building materials.

A plan of all the houses destroyed & damaged by the great fire which began in Exchange Alley, Cornhill, on Friday March 25, 1748. 1748. (E) C17:70 London (317)

A map of another of London’s great fires, that of March 1748. As with the map by Valentine Knight this was produced very quickly after the incident, a mere 8 days between the fire and publication.

Finally an inset from ‘An exact surveigh of the streets lanes and churches contained within the ruines of the city of London…’ 1669, (E) C17:70 London (643), which shows the fire from Southwark.