| A reproduction of an 1863 map of London and its outlying 'villages', facsimile-produced from the hand-coloured original. The map is available either as a set of 4 sheets in a slip case (each sheet measuring 39 x 28 ins) or as a set of 4 sheets 'rolled' ready for framing.
The 1863 map was produced at a time when Victorian society was undergoing rapid change and London was expanding fast. Detailed maps were needed to determine ownership of land and to plan development. Edward Stanford, a leading Victorian cartographer, produced these maps to show the railways, factories, docks and roads that were springing up everywhere. So fine is the detail that individual gardens of suburban homes are shown, as are separate platforms of the new railway termini and, astonishingly, even the individual statues in the city's squares.
Genealogists seeking their forebears will be able to see the roads, alleyways and outlying villages where they lived; where they went to school; the pubs where they spent their meagre wages; the churches and chapels where they were married and where they attended Sunday services; the factories, docks and farms where they worked; also maybe the miserable workhouses where they ended their days and the burial grounds where they were laid to rest.
Local historians will find fields separating Hampstead and Kilburn with just the occasional farm; footpaths wandering through open country between Peckham and Dulwich. Closer to the centre, the main activity in Parsons Green is market gardening and in Kentish Town there was a vast slaughterhouse, with separate sections for sheep and cattle, close to the suitably named Butcher's Arms public house. Factories for making calico, lead shot, turpentine and candles as well as distilleries and breweries are marked and along the river are docks and factories for timber, flour and all the commodities newly arrived from the rapidly growing empire. Large houses, just one deep, face onto Clapham Common with farmland at the end of their large gardens.
The early railways are marked as are the houses of famous people such as Sir Rowland Hill, the social reformer who invented the postal service.
he set of 4 maps comes with a booklet describing aspects of life in mid-Victorian London, with extracts from Murray's Guide to Modern London 1860. |
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