[TO BE ADDED]
CHECK that this image is indeed of the 1746 1st edition - the map was frequently reproduced and partly revised at least to 1769.]
This map was first published by Rocque in 1746, and several editions appeared before his death in 1762. His widow Mary Ann carried on the business for a few years, until, in the late 1760s, she transferred the plates of the map to the publishers Carrington Bowles and Robert Sayer, under whose imprints this edition appeared in 1769. Printed in 16 sheets, the map is set within a decorative border. Its title features in English, Latin and French along the top, with emblematic figures below the City arms at top centre, and the compass star at top left. The map is dedicated to Lord Burlington at bottom centre. Scales are given at the foot of the map in versts, leagues, toises, yards and miles. A key to symbols distinguishing orchards, arable land, formal parkland and gardens, pasture, and woodland is included at bottom right.
The title states that this map was based on John Rocque (presumably 1744 or soon after). It is much more clearly delineated than Rocque's maps. Notice the hatching to show slopes. However, (so far as I can tell) the reader has to rely on other clues to know whether the slope is up or down, e.g. the relation to nearby rivers.
Notice the (unnamed) Falcon Brook arising in the south. It flows northward into 3 large ponds [where St John's Rd is today], then north for short distance before turning westward into the Thames.
"KAART van LONDEN enz en van het NABY GELEGEN LAND ruim een Uur gaans. rondsom dezelve Stad; getrokken uit de groote gemeeten Kaart van de Hr. JOHN ROCQUE, Te AMSTERDAM by ISAAK TIRION 1754" (Acc. to Google Translate: "MAP of LONDON etc and of the NEARBY LAND more than an Hour around this City; drawn from the large municipalities Map of the Hr. JOHN ROCQUE, in AMSTERDAM by ISAAK TIRION 1754")
British Library:
In the second half of the 18th century, the introduction of turnpike roads and the increased coach-traffic in and out of London contributed to the popularity of the maps of the countryside around the capital.
This map of the area ten miles round the City of London was published in Amsterdam by Isaak Tirion. Based on John Rocque's survey of 1744, the map's title, imprint and key appears in a table at top left. The scale bars are in a panel below the plan. Built-up areas are stippled in the City and hatched..."
The text (top left) declares the map is the work of "J Rocque Chorographer to His Majesty, in the Strand, London 1762. With new improvements to the year 1766." The map was created explicitly to show how much larger London was at this time than Paris ("the two RIVALS").
[PB: Compare this map of 1768 with the high-res Rocque map of 1741-5. Possible areas of further encroachment include east of future Bolingbroke Grove and several areas to the west of the Common. Roads increasingly form the boundary of the Common - previously the roads are shown as tracks, with "waste" land on either side. Now fields go right up to roads. The Rocque map published in Bern in 1766 appears to be a cleaned up copy of the orginal 1746 map, not subsequent versions.]
A highly detailed survey of land holdings in Wandsworth conducted on behalf of Earl Spencer. (This explains why the manor of All-farthing, which he did not own, is largely left blank.)
The rectangle numbered 53 in red, "Common Belonging to All-Farthing Manor", is now the "Toast Rack". What will become Trinity Rd runs straight (cf Rocque's maps) to the left of a wandering north-south track into Battersea. A relic remains today in the wide cinder track parallel to Baskerville Road.
Notice Earl Spencer's Freehold Estate outlined in RED, land held by his copyholders in ORANGE, and "Open Fields, Marsh and Commons" in GREEN. Tere appears to be clear evidence of Spencer encroachment up to the track that will become Bolingbroke Grove - is it? Look also at the "ghost road" from Tooting to Battersea that runs more or less along the parish boundary [see "Expanation" below]
Notice that the emphatic north-south road across the common is the one to Battersea, along the parish boundary - not the proto "Trinity Road" (as shown in e.g. Milne 1800). Why?
NB 'Paddocks or little parks' are represented by the letter 'p' and pink colour; the position of the residence within the park is shown by a black rectangle. Notice no "Allfarthing Piece/College Park/Toast Rack" is shown.
[NEEDS MORE WORK]
The map records the use of each field by means of an inserted letter and an overpainted colour. These make it possible to distinguish no less than twelve different types of land uses; as several are sub-divided, seventeen categories in all may be distinguished.
Arable land, when enclosed, is shown by the italic letter 'a' and a pale brown colour not unlike the one used by the Land Utilization Survey a century and a quarter later.
Enclosed meadow and pasture are shown exactly as on the later Survey, by the letter 'm' and light green colouring.
Woodland is shown by the letter 'w', tree symbols in the form of tiny circles, and dark green colour.
Enclosed market gardens receive the letter 'g' and light blue colour; nurseries 'n' and orange colour.
Orchards and osier-beds share the letter 'o' and blue colouring, so that the map reader needs to judge from the nearness of the field to the river which of the two is intended.
'Paddocks or little parks' are represented by the letter 'p' and pink colour; the position of the residence within the park is shown by a black rectangle.
Drained marshland pasture has the letters 'ma' and grey- green colouring.
Common fields, with their admixture of small strip-fields used for diverse purposes, present a difficult problem to the cartographer. One-third of the agricultural land of the London area still remained unenclosed in 1800.
Milne showed great care and skill in representing, within the limits of scale, the variety of land use in common fields. The letters 'caf' designate common arable fields.
They are coloured brown if wholly arable, and bear conventionalized brown and green stripes if there is a considerable admixture of grassland strips with the arable. Common meadows bear the letters 'cmf' and solid green colouring, or green and brown bands as might be appropriate.
Common market-garden fields are shown by the letters 'cgf' and blue colouring, or by blue and brown bands.
Great care is used to make information about common fields comprehensive. Within the common fields of Battersea, for example, it is possible to recognize on the map tracts of wholly arable land, blocks of meadow, areas of mixed arable and market-garden strips, a patch of drained marsh-pasture and a number of nurseries and market-gardens held in severalty within the boundaries of the common fields.
The legend attached to the map enables all forms of land use mentioned above to be distinguished. Other forms depend on the engraving for their recognition.
Commons and open spaces such as village greens are shown without letter or colour, but have the name of the common, or green, inserted within the boundary.
Lakes and flooded pits are shown, as on the modern six-inch Ordnance map, by thickening their outline on the north and west sides.
The well-spaced buildings on the planned estates of Bloomsbury, Blackheath and Somers Town are stippled, whereas the congested streets in the older parts of London have their buildings densely ruled.
In addition to roads, field tracks are shown by double lines of dots, with single dotted lines for paths across commons and open fields.
Parish boundaries in open country are shown by dots in groups of three.
Relief is shown by means of hachures assisted by a deepening of the colours over hachured portions which adds emphasis to them. The hachuring reveals clearly the erosion, surfaces bevelling the summits of the ridges of Hampstead, Harrow and Richmond, and enables even subdued features such as the terminal bluff of the Taplow Terrace to be recognized. Milne's map is valuable as a means of visualizing the landscape of the London area in terms of a 'physiographic staircase' of flats and slopes.
[Source: GBG Bull, "Introductory essay on Thomas Milne's Land Use Map of London & Environs in 1800", London Topographical Society 1975-6, Publication nos 188 & 119, on Royal Collection Trust website" here. There is also a JSTOR article by Bull - find. ]
Reproductions also appear to be available from the LTS London Topographical Society.
Ordnance Survey Old Series 1808-1822 [exact date of survey? probably towards the end of the period]
Notice e.g. the "Iron Railway" running north-south, parallel the River Wandle.
Tithe Apportionment, 1840s
I have downloaded an interesting-looking journal article: "Maps and the Assessment of Parish Rates in Nineteenth-Century England and Wales", byRichard R. Oliver and Roger J. P. KainImago Mundi
Imago Mundi
Vol. 50 (1998), pp. 156-173 (18 pages)
Published by: Imago Mundi, Ltd.
Previous Item | Next Item
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1151398
Abstract
This paper reviews the role of maps in the assessment of rates levied for the relief of poverty in nineteenth-century England and Wales and examines the relationships between tithe maps and parochial assessment maps both in general terms and with specific reference to Poor Law unions in the county of Kent. An appendix lists 207 parochial assessment maps made in connection with the levy of poor rates which are extant in the public archives and libraries of England and Wales. Other 'lost' examples of this genre awaiting discovery in parish churches and vestries will undoubtedly add to this small but important constituent of the corpus of English and Welsh cadastral maps.
[Source: Link]
I have made a pdf of OLIVER and CAIN, MAPS and ASSESSMENTS OF PARISH RATES (1998) is here.
[The map shows the date "1829" prominently, but this is the 11th edition, 1847. Notice there is a completed railway line to Earlsfield, but the one to "Wandsworth Common" to the east has not even in progress. To the south-east, the Common is shown as stretching to the stream at the lowest point of today's Nightingale Lane. A wide track crosses from what is now Trinity Road to a pint near the 3-island pond on "The Five Houses" (i.e. today's Bolingbroke Rd). Surely the north-south road joining today's Bolingbroke Rd and Bellevue is misplaced? See also the numerous ponds and the many islands in the Black Sea to the north edge of the Common. It would be good to compare this with earlier editions. Most Cruchley maps I have come across do not reach out as far as Wandsworth.]
British Library: Cruchley, New Plan of London and its Environs, New edition 1847
This map is particularly significant because it was produced just before the Common was taken into public ownership i.e. before it was "improved". Notice e.g. the relative absence of trees, but great areas of furze (gorse). Also the large number of gravel and sand pits, and associated ponds and lakes shown (and there were probably many ponds and pits to small and numerous to map). Wandsworth Common was famously wet and wild - hence a favourite destination for London's amateur and professional naturalists, and picnickers.
Compare with the OS map of 20 years later, below.
[RE-DO MAP]
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/maps/uk/zoomify135133.html
Red numbers refer to an index, on the back of the map.
[Motco ("Man on the Clapham Omnibus"?) once sold this map (and others) on a CD-ROM, but they ceased trading in 2017. Sad.]
I have now found excellent versions in the marvellous David Rumsey Collection:
Edward Stanford, Library Map of London and its Suburbs, London (1891). For sale (£2000) in 2019 by Daniel Crouch Rare Books (London):
Edward Stanford,, London, 1891. One of the most important maps of Victorian London Engraved map, hand coloured in outline on four sheets, each segmented into 25 segments, a few tears to linen folds each section with a key map pasted to the marbled wrapper. First published in 1862, the map was to go through 21 revisions until its final appearance in 1901. "The plates of Stanford's Library Map of London' were used in the production of a number of other maps including the School Board Map of London, Booth's Descriptive Map of London Poverty, several metropolitan improvement maps, a map showing the distribution of troops lining the streets for the 1897 royal jubilee, another showing the routes taken by the infantry from their quarters to their places on the streets on the occasion of Edward VII's coronation, and Stanford's plan of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar, 1903." (Hyde) Scale: 6 inches to 1 statute mile. Hyde 91 (17).
Ordnance Survey, 1893-4 [N and S sheets combined and cropped]
"No Common in the neighbourhood of London has suffered more cruelly in past times from encroachments of all kinds. It now consists of 194 acres, but a glance at the map will show that formerly it must have had a considerably larger area...[However] what remains of the Common, in its trisected and shorn condition, is still of considerable value to the residents in the neighbourhood" (pp.100-101).
Trinity Road, Alma Terrace, Heathfield Road, Warden's Quarters, Magdalen Road, Lyford Road, Dorlcote Road, Henderson Road, Nicosia Road, Patten Road, Routh Road, Baskerville Road, Brodrick Road, Wandle Road, Hendham Road, Dalebury Road, Crockerton Road, Beechcroft Road, Burntwood Lane, Franchecourt Road, Summerley Street, Skelbrook Street, Garratt Lane, Boyce's Cottages, Jubilee Cottages, Victoria Cottages, Trewint Street, Thoendean Street, Steerforth Street, Siward Road, [Turtte Road], Burtop Road, Headworth Road, Summer's Town, Riverside Road, Garrett Lane, Huntspil Street, Bellow Street, Squarry Street, Garrett Green, Aloyne Road, [Maskell Road], Edward's Terrace etc
Description of boundaries of walk: on the north Nightingale Lane, Clapham Common; on the east Balham Hill, Balham High Road; on the south west Trinity Road; on the north west Bellevue Road. [Parishes not indicated] Trinity Road, Wandsworth Place, Chetwoode Street, Holderness Road, St Nicholas Road.
[No revisions between 1913 and 1934? Really?]
A curious map. Some of it seems speculative or futuristic (and therefore wrong). For example, the "Magdalen estate" is shown laid out like a garden suburb, including (unnamed) diagonal roads, but in practice e.g. Loxley/Frewin/Herondale Roads were abbreviated, and Ellerton became in effect a border or boundary between these roads and Tilehurst/Godley/Fieldview to the south-west.
NB: Very little information shown about this map. It appears to be part of an invasion plan. Notice the prison and hospitals outlined in red. Why? Were they intended targets? Or were they highlighted as particularly useful if invasion was succesful?
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/maps/uk/004995881usw.html?
Nature, 13 October 1945
https://www.nature.com/articles/156445a0
A COLLECTION of German military maps is on public exhibition during this month at the Royal Geographical Society's House at the corner of Kensington Gore and Exhibition Road. A few of these maps are shown on wall panels: the remainder can be seen in the Map Room on request.
These maps are of interest in connexion with German plans for the invasion of England. Those shown on the wall panels include a plan of London on the scale of 1/20,000, emphasizing, in colour and by symbols, buildings and areas of special importance; for example: government offices; main railway stations, marshalling yards, tracks, and bridges; hospitals, industrial sites, and post offices; scientific institutions and historic buildings. A numbered key in the margin gives identifications and brief particulars.
There are similar plans on a large scale (1/10,000) of Birmingham, Cardiff and South Shields. A night-flying target map of London, 1/100,000, is also displayed; target areas, outlined in red, include docks, airfields, reservoirs, etc. Other exhibits are a sheet of the Stellungskarte of Great Britain, about 2˝ inches to the mile, with military information; a sheet, London (West), of the air edition of the German Army map, 1/200,000, with airfields conspicuously marked, and a sheet, Tipperary, of a 1/100,000 map of Ireland. Most of these maps are reproductions on slightly different scales, with additional information overprinted, of maps published by the Ordnance Survey. Official surveys of most countries in Europe were also reproduced by the German Staff, for example, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Greece and Russia, and representative sheets of these are exhibited.
[PB: I have since come across much more detailed maps on the David Rumsey site. I have downloaded and started to organise this material on the Wandsworth Bridge page on this site.]
Black - Total destruction
Purple - Damage beyond repair
Dark Red - Seriously damaged, doubtful if repairable
Light Red - Seriously damaged, repairable at cost
Orange - General blast damage, minor in nature
Yellow - Blast damage, minor in nature
Green - Clearance areas
Small circle - V2 Bomb
Large circle - V1 bomb
Bombs, 1939-1945
NB. This may not be as reliable as the LCC map above. I have not looked very closely, but I notice it does not include e.g. the Loxley Rd or the Lyford Rd bombs.
Notice the wartime "pre-fabs" shown on several parts of the Common - along Bellevue and Bolingbroke Grove, near Spencer Park, and covering the triangles of Common near Clapham Junction Station. (What do the fairly numerous crosses or plus signs represent?) I wonder where the squatted Nissen Huts were? Do they appear on this map, or had they already been destroyed?
As above, notice e.g. pre-fab bungalows, sometimes in double rows, along Bellevue and Bolingbroke Grove, near Spencer Park, and covering the triangles of Common near Clapham Junction Station. [PB: Higher resolution maps in hand.]
Wandsworth Borough Council, Conservation Area, 2009
Poop and scoop zones, etc
Shirley Passmore, Wandsworth Common divided, [TITLE?], cover
Shirley Passmore, areas enclosed by 1871
OpenStreetMap, 13.3.2019
[Add references and commentary - e.g. how the geology appears to define the Common. Perhaps add an outline to show past and current edge of Common? I have included in the key/legend only rocks that appear on this map. "Head" is an old term to describe "deposits consisting of fragmented material which, following weathering, have moved downslope through a process of solifluction" [solifluction = "flowage of water-saturated soil down a slope under the pull of gravity"].
Google, 13.3.2019
(screen grab of map on WBC Planning website, March 2020)
