Category Archives: Map errors

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…

The classical world

The subject of teaching Latin in schools has been in the news lately.  Go back a few hundred years, and learning about ancient languages and civilisations was a fundamental part of education. Fascination with classical learning, and the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, could be expressed in maps as well as other forms. This atlas containing 36 maps of the classical world, with accompanying tables describing the organisation of the Roman Empire, has just been catalogued. All the maps date from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, and almost all are French.

Map Res. 152 (1)

This is an atlas factice – a composite atlas, assembled to order or bound by the collector – and these are always particularly exciting to deal with as you don’t know what you will find next. It has no title page, but bears the spine title “Antient mapps”. It is quite coherently organized, beginning with maps of the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire (see above), which even include small inset maps of the eastern and western hemispheres for a global view. It goes on to include more detailed maps of the Empire’s regions, and those associated with other early civilizations such as Greece, Illyria and Scythia; then come maps of the regions of Turkey and the Colchis and Albania regions of what is now Georgia in the Caucasus.

Most of the maps don’t appear to be very common, and a detailed map of Gallia Antiquae (ancient Gaul or France), which was first made by the French mapmaker Nicolas Sanson in 1627, appears in a later revised edition by Pierre Moulart-Sanson (his grandson) with additional descriptive text for which we have not been able to find any records elsewhere. It may however appear unrecorded in atlases.

All the countries around the Mediterranean are shown as they were in the times of earlier civilisations, with Roman provinces and in some cases Roman roads marked; roads can be seen converging on the city of Rome on the map above, reminiscent of the old joke that the Roman roads ran very straight in all directions, and all led to Rome. The details of roads are sometimes derived from the Peutinger Table, a Medieval copy of a an earlier map showing the roads of the Roman Empire (you can see a copy online and have fun planning routes on Roman roads here https://www.omnesviae.org/viewer/).

By modern standards the maps are not that geographically accurate. Some places are shown as being on the same latitude when they are really an enormous distance apart, and ancient sites are occasionally shown in the wrong place. The shape of the Caucasus below is somewhat different to how it would be represented on a modern map. For some of the maps it is very difficult to calculate which prime meridian is being used.

Map Res. 152 (43)

Almost all the maps are French publications, with Nicolas Sanson and his son Guillaume being most widely represented, though a few Italian ones are included. This atlas is in the Bodleian Library, but nine of the maps also appear in another composite atlas held in the library of one of the university colleges, with a manuscript title page, suggesting that these may have been available as a set. These are nearly all by the Sansons.

Antient mapps. [1660-1723] . Map Res 152