Since Roman times, map-makers have tried to impose order on the chaotic streets of London. Some have been broken by the task
Some people prefer to contemplate the maps of London rather than navigate their way around its physical streets. Branwell Brontė, immured in the parsonage of Haworth, closely studied any map of London he could find. He familiarised himself with every street, and every junction, so that he could discourse freely and effectively with any Londoner passing through his neighbourhood. It was as if he had himself become a resident of the city. He never set foot in the cap ital during his short life; but he felt that he knew it intimately. It was an illusion, of course, but all maps are illusions.
The history of London may be said to unfold, map by map, in symbolic fashion. The map is a symbol, not a record or a description. It bears as much relation to the actual shape and nature of London as the sculptures of Canova or Rodin bear to the human form. The map is an idealisation, a beautiful illusion of symmetry and grace. It gives form and order to the formless and disordered appearance of the capital. In the British Library's forthcoming exhibition "London: a life in maps", there is a gallery of shapes and perspectives, decorous and intriguing in turn, all of them creating a wholly different London.
The engraving of the city on a Roman medal of AD296, the first image of London ever created, is still a source of delight. It has all the wonder of first things. But then there are also maps created by the Luftwaffe to expedite the bombing of the capital. There are drawings by Robert Adam and Nicholas Hawksmoor. There is the preparatory work for the first Ordnance Survey of London in the 1790s. Each of these exhibits manifests a different sense of order and of symmetry. But the technical ambition is, in all cases, the same - to redeem the imperfect; to create order where there is, in effect, none; to organise the city on the principles of aesthetic harmony.
The first printed map of London is, therefore, of special significance. It has been called the "Agas map" but in fact its designer and engraver are unknown; it is believed to have been commissioned by Queen Mary to celebrate the 16th-century city over which she ruled. In its complete form, it would have measured some eight feet wide and five feet high, and was designed to encompass both the city and its suburbs beyond the walls.
It was the first attempt to preserve for posterity a reality that was changing irretrievably all the time. So the labyrinth of London's alleys and courts, the maze of its passages and yards, has been erased for the sake of certain broad thoroughfares and wide streets. The houses of London are given a more uniform and pleasing appearance than they might otherwise deserve. The citizens are depicted as larger than life-size, as if the engraver wished to emphasise the human dimension of what was, even then, considered to be an inhuman city. This is London as moral spectacle. Yet even in this idealised and harmonious form, there are indications of the daily life of the city. Shirts and bed linen are lying out to dry in Moorfields; archers are practising in a neighbouring pasture.
The earliest panoramas of London are always outlined from vantage points along the river. It is an indication of the significance of the Thames in city life, but the river also lends fluency and harmony to the otherwise disparate and disproportioned cityscape of towers and roofs and churches. It is an image of the natural world in what was already a most unnatural city. Nicholas Hollar's panorama of 1747 is the single most important example of the genre, and it is possible to gauge where he stood (or sat) to take the co-ordinates of the city. He was on the roof of Southwark Cathedral, then known as Saint Saviour and Saint Mary Overie; more particularly, he positioned himself at the north-west corner of the bell tower, a spot that can still be visited and from where a very different vista unrolls.
As London grew bigger, so did the maps, becoming some of the largest in the world. The one devised by John Ogilby and William Morgan was published in 1676 in order to decipher the state of London after the Great Fire. It covered some 20 sheets and, although it was advertised as the result of "mesuration and plotting", the effect is one of bewildering complexity. John Roque's map of London, undertaken in 1783, was so large that it was meant to be placed on a "roller" so that it did not "interfere with any other furniture".
It took Roque seven years to complete, and brought him to the point of bankruptcy. At the end of the 18th century, what was then the largest map of London was completed by Richard Horwood. It covered 94 square feet, and even contained street numbers as well as names and houses. It conveyed what was seen to be, even at that date, the immensity of London. It broke Horwood. He laboured over it for nine years and, four years after its completion, died at the age of 45. The measuring of London can be fatal.
By the 19th century, London had become a city of maps. The Victorian city seemed too vast for comprehension, and so the maps changed their nature. There were "cab fare maps" and "cholera maps", outlining the prevalence of that disease; there were maps detailing the various levels of alcohol consumption and the incidence of pov erty; there were maps of street improvements, and maps of "vice". London became an arena for map-makers, one laid upon another like some social and historical palimpsest.
There were also maps of modern transport, including hackney carriages and trams, that were the predecessors of what is arguably the most famous London map ever created: the map of the London Underground, which was drawn by Harry Beck in 1931. One of the greatest of all London artists, he was by trade an electrical draughtsman, then out of employment, and he based his design on the circuit diagrams that he drew in the course of his work.
The result is a map of stunning elegance and such simplicity that, more than 70 years later, it still forms the basis of all Underground maps. It does not matter that the positions of the stations have been fixed quite arbitrarily, and that the notation on the map bears only the smallest relation to the actual site of Sloane Square or Notting Hill Gate or West Acton. It does not matter that the distance of the outer routes has been compressed, and that the Thames becomes a stylised line that might have strayed from a painting by Piet Mondrian. It is important only that the Underground map should continue the tradition of harmony and fluency manifested in the earliest maps of London.
Another heroic figure in the history of London map-making is Phyllis Pearsall. In the mid-1930s, she rose every day at 5am and set out from her small bedsit on Horseferry Road near Victoria Station to tread the streets of London for the next 18 hours. And the purpose of all this activity? Pearsall produced the first A to Z, the ubiquitous and indispensable guide to London. She had divined the need for such a publication when, in 1935, she had lost her way while using a map that was some 20 years out of date.
So she began her own career as an extraordinary map-maker. She covered 3,000 miles of streets, and completed 23,000 entries, which she kept in shoeboxes beneath her bed. However, as no publisher was willing to take on distribution, she delivered copies herself, in a wheelbarrow, to W H Smith.
The little book has now become required reading for any Londoner, especially since the number of London streets had risen to 50,000 by the time of her death in 1996. There is now a blue plaque to her memory, in the borough of Southwark; few Londoners deserve that honour more. But, as this exhibition testifies, the story does not end. Maps of London are being devised at this very moment. The story of London, and the map-making of London, will never end.
"London: a life in maps" opens at the British Library, London NW1 on the 24 November. For details, see www.bl.uk
Mapping London today
"The truest and toughest instalment yet." Ryan Gilbey's verdict on Casino Royale, page 49l Thanks to Google Earth, anyone with a computer can now see a complete photographic aerial view of London. Images of the capital were first made available online in 2005, and since then Google claims that 10 per cent of internet users have downloaded the software.
Online mapping sites are now used by 85 per cent of Britons. Advertisers have already caught on to this trend: "RoofShout", a US company, specialises in rooftop images which will be visible on Google Earth. With "mapvertising", companies strike deals with sites to feature logos marking their locations .
The Time Travel Tube Map (www.tom-carden.co.uk) is a reorganisation of the original Tube map based on travel times. The map morphs according to the length of the journey from your particular station.
Henrietta Clancy
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