Modern London Maps E-Book

Vincent Westbrook

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 153

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Featuring over 60 maps of London from the twentieth century, this fascinating miscellany provides an enthralling exploration of the history of the city. One of the best ways to gain an insight into a city's multilayered past is by deciphering its maps, and this curated collection of historical maps of London will help you do just that. Many of these hugely interesting and significant maps are also beautiful works of art and fascinating examples of design in and of themselves. The majority of the maps in this collection have been drawn from the historical treasure house that is The London Archives, which has been housing London's records since 1889. The maps are presented in thematic chapters, including: • Making Connections: Maps of the railways, tube system and roads. • Let's Go Outside: London's green spaces and the River Thames. • Picture This: Pictorial, decorative and artistic maps. Perfect for map enthusiasts, history buffs and lovers of graphic design and London, this is a visually stunning book that you will spend hours poring over.

Leseprobe

Contents

Introduction

Setting the Scene

The Royal Family

London Melting Pot

War and Peace

Let’s Go Outside

Making Connections

‘Bread and Circuses’

Picture This

Conclusion

Timeline

Index

About The London Archives

Acknowledgements

Picture Credits

Introduction

London is a palimpsest. Throughout its lifetime London’s fabric has been overwritten so many times that its earliest traces are physically compacted deep below ground. Some of London’s Roman remains such as the Temple of Mithras are located 8 metres (26 feet) below the current street level and when you visit it you literally descend through London’s history layer by layer. But it’s not only London’s fabric that is overwritten, so too are its people and the events that they propagate. London has been home to an inestimable number of people which, were it possible to calculate, would run into the hundreds of millions if not billions.

The overwriting frequently obliterates what came before and even when it leaves traces these are often eroded and dislocated from their original context such that their meaning becomes lost. This loss can be mitigated by recording what came before and, while these records can take many forms, some of the best records of a city’s past are contained in its maps.

Maps of London have been made since the late 17th century. The quantity and variety of maps being produced increased steadily until the Victorian age when, with the aid of mechanical production, they surged dramatically. Events such as the Great Exhibition of 1851 accelerated this further, with numerous cartographers stepping in to produce and sell their maps and guides to the six million visitors who attended the event. By the end of the Victorian age the quantity and breadth of London maps was astounding.

Not only had the Ordnance Survey mapped the whole of London, at a scale of 25 inches to the mile, there were now dozens of commercial cartographers all putting their own spin on the London map. These included Stanford’s, Bacon, Philips, Bartholomew, Nicholson’s and Geographia, to name but a few. They created wall maps, library maps, folded maps, gazetteers and, increasingly towards the end of the century, atlases. The growth of London’s maps continued into the 20th century, expanding to address new themes and specialisms demanded by the modern city, with Tube maps, tram maps, utility maps and many others joining the more traditional array.

Maps give us the opportunity to see some of the earlier overwritten layers of London in their original context and they can make those earlier versions of London legible to the contemporary observer, especially when they are viewed in conjunction with other contemporaneous material.

When examining a map, it’s important to understand both when it was produced and why it was produced. Knowing when a map was made is important so that it can be put in context with the events of its time. It is useful to understand a map in relation to the presences and absences of a city’s physical elements, what existed when it was created that doesn’t exist today, and what had not yet been built. But it’s also important to align it with the significant events of its day. Nothing brings a map to life more than putting it into context with the experiences of the people who inhabited the city at that time. It is important to know why a map was made, and by whom, because like any human creation, maps bear the prejudices and opinions of the hands that make them.

The map opposite was created in 1918 to show the history of the physical changes in the City of London by superimposing the 16th, 17th and 18th century City over the Ordnance Survey map. The cumulative effect is initially confusing, but it goes some way to illustrate the physical overwriting of a city’s fabric that occurs over time. Streets and buildings appear and disappear or are re-aligned as a continual process. The 1918 map leaves a fascinating snapshot of the cumulative impact of London’s historic layering at that time. During the 20th and early 21st centuries, we have developed many new ways to capture and analyse London’s changing fabric and to place those findings on maps, which will be explored in the coming pages.

Setting the Scene

Under the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901, London experienced an era of unprecedented growth and development. Driven by the Industrial Revolution and its role as the capital of the British Empire, London’s wealth, population and physical extent all grew exponentially. Despite some significant underlying social issues, it was the largest and wealthiest city in the world.

The construction of Tower Bridge in 1892.

At the turn of the 20th century, London’s upward trajectory looked set to continue. It was embracing the emerging power and communication technologies, expanding its underground network and improving the roads. It was even beginning to address some of its underlying social inequalities. However, not far into the new century London would have to deal with the first of two world wars which were both to have a significant impact on its physical and social structures.

It is difficult to imagine how different London might have been today had the two world wars somehow been averted. Both wars resulted in the acceleration of some of the more progressive social and cultural ideas of their day and, in the case of World War II, also in the destruction of significant parts of London’s historic fabric. However, for the first 14 years of the century, it was business as usual, and London’s incremental improvements continued with gradual updates to the building stock and relatively minor changes to the road network. The vestiges of pre-industrial London were being replaced with the new; the Millbank Prison closed in 1890 to be replaced by Tate Britain in 1897 and Tower Bridge was completed in 1894.

London’s map makers continued broadly as before, but they were also embracing new technologies and production methods and they were creating an increasingly diverse range of maps to address the interests and specialisms demanded by the developing city.

1901

London in the Beginning of the 20th Century

There cannot be any better map with which to illustrate London at the start of the 20th century than Chas Baker and Company’s pictorial plan of London. Chas Baker and Company were clothiers established in Seven Sisters in 1864, who over the next 40 years would expand to open premises in several other Central London locations. In 1892 as part of an innovative advertising strategy they started producing London guides and decorative maps to promote their stores. These proved to be very popular, and by the end of the first decade of the 20th century, they had sold many hundreds of thousands of copies.

The pictorial plan that they published in 1901, illustrated opposite, is appropriately titled ‘London in the Beginning of the 20th Century’. It shows a perspective view of Central London from an elevated position south of the Thames somewhere around Camberwell. The foreground areas of Westminster, the City, Chelsea and Southwark are shown in greater detail with the plan’s northern extremities fading out. The map’s drawing style is slightly fuzzy but it retains just enough detail to make individual buildings recognizable – even Euston station’s arch is just about discernible. The principal physical elements that form the fabric of Victorian London are all in place; the roads and bridges, railways and their stations, museums, parks, palaces and institutions. Some are only recently completed but the image looks, to any contemporary observer, broadly like the London that we know today. While not entirely intended as a map by which to navigate, the roads are clearly labelled and with its illustrated landmark buildings it would have provided some useful wayfinding guidance so long as you didn’t wander too far.

Chas Baker and Company continued to produce their maps until at least 1909 and it is interesting to compare that later edition against their earlier map to see how they captured London’s changing cityscape. There are two areas worth examining in more detail: Admiralty Arch and The Mall, and Aldwych and Kingsway.

Admiralty Arch and The Mall

Designed by Aston Webb, Admiralty Arch, along with the Victoria Memorial and the new façade for Buckingham Palace, were commissioned by King Edward VII in memory of his mother Queen Victoria. Having waited 60 years for the throne this seems remarkably generous of him. The construction of the arch created a ceremonial entrance to Buckingham Palace from Trafalgar Square, which was felt to put London more on a par with other European capitals, like Paris, Vienna or Berlin that had much grander ceremonial routes. While London’s normal road traffic is permitted to use the outer two arches, the central arch is reserved for royal use.

Sadly, the arch did not have long to wait before being used for a coronation as King Edward VII died in 1910. Whereas his coronation route had to pass through Horse Guards Parade to get to The Mall in 1902, George V’s coronation in 1911 could pass through the almost-completed arch. Subsequently the arch and The Mall have become London’s preferred ceremonial route for everything from royal celebrations to the London marathon. With the road leading to it coloured red since the 1950s, it is London’s red carpet to the world.

The newly completed Admiralty Arch from Charing Cross in 1910.

Detail of The Mall before the construction of Admiralty Arch and the Victoria Memorial, from the map on page 10.

Detail of the 1909 edition of the Chas Baker map showing Admiralty Arch, the Victoria Memorial and the updates to The Mall.

Detail of the Strand and Clare Market area, from the map on page 10.

Detailed extract of the 1909 edition of Chas Baker’s map, indicating the new Kingsway and Aldwych.

Aldwych and Kingsway

Clare Market was the only Elizabethan neighbourhood to have survived the Great Fire of London in 1666, and was the location of several of Charles Dickens’ novels. By the early 20th century, it had become one of inner London’s worst slum areas. Targeted for redevelopment by London County Council (LCC), it provided an opportunity for slum clearance and the means to create a new grand boulevard worthy of the capital of the British Empire.

Three thousand people were evicted from the area to allow the works to proceed, and when the new roads were opened in 1905 by the newly crowned King Edward VII, they were surrounded by empty plots. Kingsway incorporated a subway for trams, which ran the entire length of the road, with stations at each end. The central block of Bush House at the south end of Kingsway on Aldwych was opened in 1925, but many of the other plots were not completed until 1935. The London Tramways poster (opposite) from the 1930s celebrates both the Kingsway tram subway and the smattering of ‘modern’ architecture, including Bush House, that was emerging in Central London.

The tram subway was closed in 1952, when tram services ceased in London, and its southern section was converted for road traffic in 1964.

Kingsway and Bush House on Aldwych, with the tram subway entrance in the foreground, 1925.

An LCC Tramways poster from 1932 showing drawings of eight prominent Central London buildings and a key to their locations.

London’s Postal Districts

In the mid-19th century, owing to London’s continued growth and the increasing use of the postal service, in conjunction with many streets sharing the same name, post would often go astray. To resolve this problem, postcodes were introduced in 1857 by the inventor of the postage stamp, Sir Rowland Hill. Hill’s proposal (as illustrated opposite) sub-divided the capital into eight equal districts to match the eight principal segments of a compass – N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W and NW, plus two central zones West Central (WC) and East Central (EC). The public were asked to add the district’s initials at the end of an address so that their post could be more easily directed to the correct sorting office.

The Postal District scheme was successful, but London’s unruly layout and unevenly distributed population pushed back on Hill’s geographically rational organizing system. Following a report by Anthony Trollope in 1866, the NE district was deemed unviable and was merged with the E district, and in 1868 the S district was divided between the SW and SE districts. The remaining eight codes are still in use today.

During World War I, the London postal system was refined by dividing the eight post districts into sub-districts by the addition of numerals such as N1 or SE15. This was done to assist the temporary sorting office staff who had replaced the post office employees who had joined the armed services. These ‘outward’ codes are still in use today, along with Ernest Marples’ additional ‘inward’ code digits, which were introduced in the early 1960s to enable the automated sorting of the post.

London’s outward codes have become a shorthand for characterizing different London areas, particularly in respect of their desirability as an address. An interesting hack for those who struggle to understand how the outward codes are arranged is that the primary geographic ‘head’ sub-district e.g. N1, NE1, SE1, etc., is the sub-district that is closest to the centre of London. There is a common misconception that the subsequent numbers then increase, moving outwards from the centre, but this is incorrect. The subsequent numbers are typically arranged alphabetically. Hence N1 is Islington, closest to the centre; N2 is East Finchley, which is the next district alphabetically; N3 is Finchley Central; N4 is Finsbury Park; and N5 is Highbury, and so on. It’s not a system that particularly helps with navigation but is useful to understand it in principle.

1857

London Postal District Map

1867

Kelly’s London Postal District Map

Kelly’s map of 1867 is a rare example of a map that contains all of the original ten postal districts, including the South and the North East.

1869

Cruchley’s New Postal District Map of London

Cruchley’s map of 1869 includes the North East postal district but the South district has been merged with the SW and SE.

1895

The Hexagonal Map of London

An interesting hexagonal shape was suggested as an organizing geometry/geography for London by John Leighton in his book The Unification of London: The Need and the Remedy, published in 1895. Leighton (1822–1912) was an artist noted for his illustrations and book cover designs. Leighton’s proposals sought to address some of the problems regarding the organization and sizing of London’s administrative boundaries and its wayfinding issues that we are still grappling with today. His proposal was innovative and efficient, rationalizing London’s boroughs into equal-sized hexagons with each further sub-divided into triangulated ‘wards’. He also proposed using colour-coded signage on all of the street lamps to clarify which borough and ward each was within. However, his six-segmented borough sub-divisions with no east or west districts would surely only have led to further confusion in a city with a postcode system in which neither south nor north-east codes were present.

‘London As It Is’ (with detail opposite, top).

Hexagonal Islington.

Hexagonal City of London (with detail opposite, bottom).

Hexagonal district coding, with no East or West segments.

‘London Indexed in 2-mile Hexagonals’.

1902

Sammels & Taylor’s Up to Date Pocket Atlas & Guide to London

London’s continued growth during the 19th century gradually made the use of folded maps on the street impractical as they were simply becoming too big. The solution was the atlas. Although London atlases have been around for several hundred years, during the 19th century they started to come into their own as they could neatly capture the whole city in a handy book form that could be discreetly consulted. By the beginning of the 20th century, most of the main map producers also published atlases, usually with street indexes and often including brief guides. Their titles included words like ‘Portable’, ‘ABC’, ‘A1’, ‘Authentic’, ‘Pocket’, ‘Handy’ and ‘Up to date’.

Sammels & Taylor’s ‘Up to Date Pocket Atlas & Guide’ is a typical but handsome example of the atlases available at that time. With a cover featuring the newly completed Tower Bridge, it is keen to explain the simplicity of its arrangement: ‘While the Area included in this Atlas is large and detailed, the method of ready reference is simplicity itself. The arrangement of the Maps – easily grasped and remembered – will save immense trouble and vexation, in hunting for this or that street or locality. Even the stranger in the Metropolis may hereby find his way about with the greatest facility, and (from the handiness of the Map) in defiance of wind and weather.’

It goes on to explain how the pages of maps are organized around ‘the great centre of London – Charing Cross and one mile around’, with subsequent areas on the following pages spiralling out from it. It is pleasing to note, on the handsome oval ‘great centre of London’ map illustrated opposite, the dotted presence of the forthcoming Aldwych and Kingsway roads (see page 14) and the absence of Admiralty Arch (see page 12).

London’s street atlases continued through many mostly subtle updates and changes before Phyllis Pearsall developed her ground-breaking and ubiquitous Geographers’ A–Z in 1936. For ease of navigation on the streets of London, the pocket atlas is still the most practical hard-copy map available.

1886

The Goad Insurance Maps and the Guildhall

Among the most important records of London’s changing building stock in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are Charles E Goad’s Insurance Plans of London. Charles Goad was a civil engineer who established a business that surveyed and mapped commercial building stock for the fire insurance industry. The plans documented the key aspects of a building’s arrangement that affected its fire risk, and these plans were then leased to fire insurance companies in bound sets to assist in establishing a suitable insurance premium for their customers. They continued to be produced and updated until 1974, when what was left of the business was taken over by Experian.