London: A Life in Maps Blog

The Man Who Drew London

With apologies for the gap since the last post here, I thought I'd just let you know about a small upcoming exhibition, which follows on neatly from the success of London: A Life in Maps.

From 20th July a new display, Hollar as a Mapmaker, will be viewable in the Maps Reading Room lobby here at the British Library in St Pancras. The display celebrates the 400th anniversary of the birth of the Czech artist and etcher Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677). Best known for his landscapes, portraits, fashion plates and depictions of antiquities, Hollar also had a lifelong love of maps and earned a living by etching them. It's only a small exhibition with an accompanying leaflet, but it will feature some of the most outstanding but little-known decorative examples of his work, which incorporate views and portraits. It will also include his anguished cartographical portrayal of the English and Czech civil wars and what is perhaps the most minute panorama and bird’s-eye view of London ever to be created (links are to examples on our Images Online website).

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Why London wouldn't exist without mass immigration

This might seem like an obvious statement to make, but it does have particular relevance to any discussion of London maps. Maps have long been used to illustrate social issues and conditions, whether in the 17th century or today. Living conditions in London before about 1870 were so awful that at any one time the death rate seems to have been higher than the birth rate. It was only immigration from the countryside and from abroad that enabled London to survive.
There are several maps in the exhibition that suggest why this was so, such as a survey of their London properties commissioned by the Clothworkers Company in 1612, showing gross overcrowding with privies above the Fleet River, which was already called 'Fleet Ditch' at the time, and a map from the 1850s showing domestic housing surrounded by a gas works, a vast wooden shack used to store tar and kerosene, a factory with 26 horse-power machines driving grinding stones that operated 24 hours a day, and a canal full of stagnant water. A map of 1866 also illustrates how the outbreak of cholera in that year was caused by infested water supplied from the Old Ford reservoir in the East End.
It was only immigration from outside London that enabled its population to quadruple between 1550 and 1650 and to increase six-fold between 1800 and 1900. Maps sponsored by the Liverpool industrialist Charles Booth from 1889 show that 60% of the population of some of the outer suburbs had been born outside London, while another map shows that about 18% of the population of Stepney in 1900 were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia. Booth's Poverty Map also attempted to illustrate some of these crucial social issues.
Immigration continues to be vital for London to replace those who move out. The figures for the built-up area of London alone mask the continuing increase in population which is best seen if the population of the satellite towns beyond the Green Belt - in effect the outermost London suburbs - is added. Their relationship to London can be seen in a map accompanying the Abercrombie Plan of 1944, which is also on display in the exhibition. More recently, in 2005, The Guardian newspaper commissioned a series of maps illustrating migration into the capital at the start of the 21st century.

Google Earth layer

Just a quick note to let you know about a fantastic new Google Earth layer based on London: A Life in Maps that a colleague in our web team has put together. You can download about 10 maps from the exhibition & view them as image overlays in Google Earth

The first A-Z

Peter Barber writes: "Contrary to popular belief, the first A-Z map of London was actually produced in 1623, by John Norden."

London: A Life in Maps Blog

Welcome to the London: A Life in Maps Blog, launched as a forum for discussing the exhibition of the same name currently on at the British Library. Peter Barber, Head of British Library Map Collections and curator of the exhibition will discuss various issues raised by his selection of maps and drawings, which chart the history of London through the ages - from Roman occupation to the 2012 Olympics. Read the posts, make a comment, visit the exhibition - enjoy!