Treasure.

Rocque, An Exact Survey of the Citys of London, Westminster, Ye Borough of Southwark and the Country Near Ten Miles Round, 1746

From the Bodleian Map Room ...

One of the maps in particular would be a treasure in any circumstances. John Rocque’s map, “An exact survey of the citys of London, Westminster, ye Borough of Southwark and the country near ten miles round,” is a famous and remarkable map. Made in the early 1740s and published in 1746, it covers London and the surrounding area on 16 sheets, from Harrow on the Hill in the northwest to Chislehurst, then in Kent, in the southeast. The map above is the top left hand (or north west) sheet.

As London has grown so much in the intervening two and a half centuries, the area covered by the map is now all within the conurbation of London. At the time, most of the urban area of London was contained within just one of the 16 sheets, while all around the now familiar names of London suburbs appear as rural villages surrounded by fields. With remarkable prescience, John Rocque created a map, in the mid-eighteenth century, of the London of the future. The sheet above shows the rural villages of Harrow on the Hill, Sudbury and “Wembly Green”, with a beautiful compass rose. Below, from another sheet, we see Wimbledon Common (then Wimbledon Heath) much as it might have been in the young days of the oldest Womble, Uncle Bulgaria.

Rocque, City of Dublin, 1756

From Arran Henderson ...

Not just detail, but cartographic accuracy is also part of the miracle.  Experts tell me that even in this age of satellite imaging; Google-Earth, number-crunching super computers and advanced mathematics, Rocque’s survey measurements stand up remarkably well.  But even with his new techniques and approaches aside, I still can never quite fathom just how he managed to do it to even measure, note down and record, let alone draw, and engrave such vast amounts of information. Bearing in mind the wide area covered, the level of detail seems almost magical to me, his achievement astonishing.