Our Mapmakers

Gardner and Porter

c.1633–1640 · estate surveyors

A manuscript estate map made for the lord of Allfarthing manor, one of the manors of Wandsworth. It is the earliest map to name the Common (as “Wandelesworth Common”). Little is known of the surveyors themselves.

— The Gardner–Porter map of Allfarthing Manor, 1633–1640

John Senex

c.1678–1740 · engraver, globe-maker and map publisher

A London bookseller and engraver, later a Fellow of the Royal Society, who published atlases, road books and county maps. His Surrey map shows the tangle of tracks across the open Common.

— Senex, Surrey, 1727, in A History in Maps

John Rocque

c.1704–1762 · surveyor, engraver and map publisher

Born to a Huguenot family, like many of Wandsworth’s early industrial families, Rocque began as a garden surveyor and became the outstanding London mapmaker of his age. His great survey of London and the country ten miles round (1746) is the first detailed picture of the Common, its roads, ponds and surrounding fields. His map of Surrey was completed after his death.

— John Rocque: maps of London and Surrey, 1746–1768

Isaak Tirion

1705–1765 · Amsterdam publisher

A Dutch publisher whose map of London and its surroundings (1754) was probably based on English sources. It is a reminder that London’s maps sold across Europe.

— Tirion, 1754, in A History in Maps, with a glossary of its Dutch terms (PDF)

Emanuel Bowen

c.1694–1767 · engraver and map publisher

A prolific engraver of county maps, often crowded with notes in the margins, and styled himself geographer to George II.

— Bowen, 1760, in A History in Maps

John Cary

c.1755–1835 · engraver and map publisher

The leading English map publisher of his day, known for clear, accurate engraving and for his road maps and atlases.

— Cary, 1786 and 1829, in A History in Maps

John Corris

fl. 1780s · estate surveyor

Corris surveyed the property of Earl Spencer, lord of the manor, in Wandsworth and Battersea in 1787. His manuscript maps show the fields and properties around the Common in detail. Little else is known of him.

— John Corris, Wandsworth 1787 and Battersea 1787, in A History in Maps

James Edwards

fl. 1789–1801 · author and publisher

Edwards’s Companion from London to Brighthelmston describes the road to Brighton in strip maps and text, house by house. The road crossed the Common, and the map shows forked tracks there that no longer exist.

— Edwards, Companion, 1789–1801, in A History in Maps

William Faden

1749–1836 · Geographer to the King

Successor to the business of Thomas Jefferys, Faden published fine maps of the country round London, which he revised for new editions as the roads and houses spread.

— William Faden: maps of London and Surrey, 1790–1819

Thomas Milne

fl. 1790s–1800s · land surveyor

Milne’s map of London and its environs in 1800 is coloured to show how each piece of land was used: arable, meadow, market garden, common and so on. It is an early land-use map, unusual for its time.

— Milne, Land Use, 1800, in A History in Maps

The Ordnance Survey

founded 1791 · the national mapping agency

Set up to map Britain for military purposes, the Survey produced surveyors’ drawings around 1800, the one-inch “Old Series” maps, and from the 1860s the very detailed large-scale maps that show the Common tree by tree and path by path.

— Survey drawings 1798–1809, Old Series 1808–22, and the maps of 1867–69 and 1893–94, in A History in Maps

— Pamela Taylor’s commentary on the 1868 map

George Frederick Cruchley

c.1796–1880 · map publisher

A London map-seller whose New Plan of London, first published in 1829, ran through many editions. Comparing them shows the first railway cutting across the edge of the Common in the 1830s.

— Cruchley, 1829, 1832, 1830s and 1847, in A History in Maps

The tithe surveyors

1840s

The Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 replaced tithes with money payments, and every parish was mapped field by field to work out who owed what. The maps and their apportionments name owners, occupiers and land use.

— Tithe Apportionment, 1840s, in A History in Maps, with Oliver and Cain’s study of the parish maps and rates (PDF)

Robert William Mylne

1817–1890 · civil engineer and geologist

Mylne’s geological map of London showed the gravels, sands and clays beneath the city, largely with water supply in mind. The Common sits on a gravel plateau, which explains its heath, its ponds and its gravel pits.

— Mylne, Geological, 1858, in A History in Maps

Edward Stanford

1827–1904 · map publisher

Founder of the famous map shop, Stanford published the Library Map of London and its Suburbs in 1862 and revised it over the following decades. Together the editions show the houses closing in around the Common.

— Edward Stanford: maps of London, 1862–1905

James Wyld

1812–1887 · Geographer to the Queen

A map publisher and MP, best remembered for his “Great Globe” in Leicester Square. His maps of London were reissued over many years, which can make them hard to date.

— Wyld, c.1872, in A History in Maps

Charles Booth

1840–1916 · shipowner and social investigator

Booth’s survey of life and labour in London coloured every street by the wealth or poverty of its inhabitants. His researchers walked the streets around the Common in the late 1890s, and their notebooks survive.

— Booth’s poverty map, sheet 10 (LSE)

Interpreters and others

Some of the most useful map pages on this site come with modern commentary, or from mapmakers whose names are lost.

— Pamela Taylor, commentary on the Ordnance Survey map of 1868

— “Wandsworth Common as it is and was”, c.1889

— Also in A History in Maps: Whitbread (1865), the County of Surrey road map (1874), Kelly (1886), and the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association.