Geraldine Edith Mitton

“ Turning the page, we see the old City as it was before the Fire, made up of gable-ended wooden houses with overhanging stories, crowded close together, and diversified by the numerous pinnacles and spires of the City churches, many of which were never rebuilt. ”

“ The streets, gardens, and fields are laid down with greater precision, and there is no serious attempt to combine, as Agas does, a picture or a panorama with a map. At the same time, the surveyor has been unable to resist the fashion of his time to consider the map as laid down from a bird's-eye view, so that he thinks it necessary to give something of elevation.
"I will take that part of the map which lies outside the walls. The precinct of St. Katherine stands beside the Tower, with its chapel, court, and gardens; there are a few houses near it, apparently farmhouses. ”

“ Some of these courts survive to this day. They were formed, as the demand for land grew, by running narrow lanes between the backs of houses and swallowing up the gardens. There were 479 such courts in Ogilby's London of 1677, 472 alleys, and 172 yards, besides 128 inns, each of which, with its open courts for the standing of vehicles and its galleries, stood retired from the street on a spot which had once been the fair garden of a citizen's house" (London in the Time of the Stuarts, p. 280) . ”

“ In the eighteenth-century reproductions of this map, oddly enough, in one instance this detail has disappeared, and in the other it is turned into a man driving cows into the water with a whip; thus doing away with all its significance. Far to the north in Spitalfields men are practising archery; while Aldgate, for long the home of Geoffrey Chaucer, is conspicuous a little north of the Tower.
As became a man living in days of the Reformation, Agas does not point out the religious houses then falling into decay or occupied by laymen, yet what a number of them must have been still in existence! ”

“ Designer.—Being on a very small scale, these maps are not so attractive as some that have been already discussed. John Norden, the designer, was born about 1548, and seems to have had from the first an extraordinary gift of delicate penmanship, which he turned to much account in map-making. ”

“ It is beyond Oxford Street northward that the difference is striking. This district was only just being built upon, and the well-laid-out streets soon run off into open country. "Marybone" Gardens, a favourite tea-garden, and the church, and a few houses, form a little hamlet just connected with the other part of London by a single street, and further westward, north of Berkeley Square, are fields. ”

“ Smithfield is surrounded with houses; Bridewell, with its two square courts, stands upon the river bank; Fleet Street is irregular in shape, the houses being nowhere in line; the courts of Whitefriars are still remaining. The Strand has all its great houses facing the river; their backs open upon a broad street, with a line of mean houses on the north side. On the south of the river there is a line of houses on the High Street, a line of houses along the river bank on either side, and another one running near Bermondsey Abbey. ”

“ Drawing a line northward for some way, we come to Smithfield, where tilting is represented as in animated progress. Not far northward is St. John's, Clerkenwell, and its neighbouring nunnery; to the west is the Charterhouse. Turning south again, past St. Bartholomew's Church, we see the building of Christ's Hospital, founded by Edward VI. This, it may be noted, is one of the buildings erected since Wyngaerde's time. ”

“ Giles's Church, built anno 1734," which shows that the map was made not earlier than that date. It is, in fact, a part of one of a set of eighteenth-century maps based on that of Agas, and not only differing from it in detail, but also differing slightly one from another. Some of these are unsigned, and some are signed "G. Vertue," and were specifically claimed by Vertue as having been made by him, and based upon Agas's map of 1560. ”

“ Details.—It will be noticed that the sheet chosen for inclusion in this atlas shows very nearly the same area as the map of Ogilby which follows, but does not go quite so far eastward as the Tower. The City wall is clearly shown along the north side of the City, and the bastion near Cripplegate stands out; the town ditch can be traced just beyond this corner running southward. ”

“ Where the Space admits the Name of the Place is in Words at length, but where there is not room, a Letter and Figure refers you to the Table in which the Streets are Alphabetically dispos'd, and in every Street the Churches and Halls, Places of Note, and Inns, with the Courts, Yards, and Alleys, are named ”

“ George's, was a busy High Street with streets to right and left; the river bank was lined with houses from Paris Gardens to Rotherhithe; there were streets at the back of St. Thomas's and Guy's; Lambeth Marsh lay in open fields, and gardens intersected by sluggish streams and ditches; and Rotherhithe Marsh lay equally open in meadows and gardens, with ponds and ditches in the east....
"From any part of London it was possible to get into the country in a quarter of an hour. One realizes the rural surroundings of the City by considering that north of Gray's Inn was open country with fields ”

“ In Bermondsey two Queens died—Katherine, consort of Henry V., and Elizabeth, consort of Edward IV. Only a year or two before this map was made had the grand old Abbey been surrendered to the King (for a full account see Mediæval London, vol. ii., p. 288) .
The Tower, taken as a whole, is very much as we still know it; it is one of the oldest remaining relics of the past. Note the gruesome place of execution near by, and the guns and primitive cranes at work upon the wharf. Just beyond it eastward rise the fretted pinnacles of St. Katherine's by the Tower, on the spot now covered by St. ”

“ There are many pleasure-gardens, for the Surrey side was for long the recreation-ground of the Londoner. On the river there are innumerable wherries, and below the bridge at Billingsgate many ships cluster; one has even managed to get above the bridge. Off the Steelyard and at the Tower are men and horses in the water. This is a most interesting point. In those at the Tower it may be clearly seen that the man is filling the water-casks on the animals' backs with a ladle. ”

“ It is still the main highway for most people, though there were hackney coaches for hire. There was still only London Bridge by which to get across the river on foot, and the boats were used as ferries. ”

“ To facilitate this Rocque has marked the houses bordering streets in white, and only blocked them in black where they line market-gardens and other parts indicated by a light surface. The map is a model of care and comprehensive detail.
Detail.—Beginning in the lower left-hand corner, we have the Royal Hospital, with its neatly-laid-out grounds. Close to it the Westbourne, whose irregular line determined the boundaries of Chelsea, falls into the Thames; higher up its course is through the Five Fields, now one of the most wealthy and popular districts of London—namely, Belgravia. St. ”

“ THE FOLLOWING EXPLANATIONS ARE EXTRACTED FROM OGILBY'S KEY TO THE MAP IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
We Proceed to the Explanation of the Map, containing 25 Wards, 122 Parishes and Liberties, and therein 189 Streets, 153 Lanes, 522 Alleys, 458 Courts, and 210 Yards bearing Name.
The Broad Black Line is the City Wall. The Line of the Freedom is a Chain. ”

“ The houses running from it up to the foreground of the picture are beautifully delineated, and may be taken as models of Elizabethan architecture; while the man with the harp and the horseman are quite clearly enough drawn to show their period by the style of their dress. ”

“ A few scattered houses and some cultivated fields cover this space, and in one corner is "Bedlame."
A mass of houses lies westward, running on to the Charter House, northward of which are open fields, and so to "Clarkin Well." ”

“ The Great Letters with Numbers refer to Halls, Great Buildings, and Inns. The Small Letters to Courts, Yards, and Alleys, every Letter being repeated 99 times, and sprinkled in the Space of 5 Inches, running through the Map, from the Left Hand to the Right, &c. Churches and Eminent Buildings are double Hatch'd, Streets, Lanes, Alleys, Courts, and Yards, are left White. ”

“ It can be seen at the British Museum. That which is here presented is the central part of this, not reduced, but on the same scale. Its interest is greatly increased by the fact that the names are printed on the map, and are not given separately as in other instances. ”

“ W. H. Overall says it cannot be supposed that all the cities of the world engraved in Braun and Hogenburg's work were freshly surveyed for the purpose; and there are several points—such, for instance, as the inclusion of the steeple of St. ”