1816 Cary Folding Wall Map of London, England

This is John Cary's 1816 large-format folding map of London, England. Nearly five feet in length, the map allows for the presentation of the city down to a minute level of detail at a time when its face was rapidly changing, with the construction of grand new buildings, bridges, docks, and canals.

A Closer Look

The City of London, Westminster, Southwark, and surrounding suburbs are displayed and color-shaded, with parishes within the city similarly shaded, for easy distinction. Streets, parks, squares, public buildings (hospitals, museums, palaces, etc.), and other features are labeled throughout. An index of over one hundred public buildings at top-left corresponds to numbers on the map, while a similar index towards top-left lists churches. An index of parishes corresponds to the larger circled numbers on the map, while a street index appears at the bottom, and a table of high-water levels of the Thames at various points appears at the right. Two concentric circles emanate from a point along Tottenham Court Road near Fitzroy Square, though the significance of these is not clear. Ghosted-in streets appear along the edges of city, where existing streets were expected to continue outwards into growing suburbs. Within the city, a thick yellow line marks the location of Regent Street, in the early phases of construction (completed 1825), which was an early example of large-scale urban planning in London. Regent Park, where the new street ended, was also a recent development, a royal hunting ground and farmland rented out to tenants that was transformed into a public 'pleasure garden' by architects John Nash and father-son team James and Decimus Burton, who also planned Regent Street.

Other works in progress appear, such as the 'Intended Line of the Regency Canal,' that is, the Regent's Canal just north of London, which was ordered by an act of Parliament in 1812, first used (in part) the same year this map was published, and fully completed in 1820. A similar act of Parliament in 1809 planned for the construction of a bridge across the Thames at Vauxhall, originally called Regent Bridge but renamed Vauxhall Bridge by the time of opening in the summer of 1816. The Waterloo Bridge (renamed after the British victory there in 1815) and Southwark Bridge (here bearing its rare early name 'Queen Street Bridge') were also under construction at the time of publication and would open by the end of the decade.

Also new to the city was the massive Millbank Prison near the Vauxhall Bridge in Westminster, originally known as the National Penitentiary. The prison was originally planned as a test of philosopher Jeremy Bentham's (1748 - 1832) conception of a 'Panopticon' design for a prison; although Bentham's plan was abandoned, it retained a clear influence on the building's ultimate construction. The prison also ran into immediate problems of subsidence due to the marshy ground upon which it was built, leading to continual modifications until 1821. Mostly due to its unusual design and poor initial construction, the prison was a regular source of controversy, costs, and complaints, leading Parliament (located a stone's throw away) to pass two bills to reform it in the 1840s. Aside from poor diet and sanitary conditions and the planned isolation of the prisoners due to the prison's design, the constant chiming of nearby Big Ben every fifteen minutes, day and night, was maddening for prisoners. Ultimately, the National Penitentiary was relocated to Pentonville and Millbank served a variety of functions, including holding prisoners bound for emigration, especially to Australia. When the prison was demolished in the 1890s, its site was used for the National Gallery of British Art, later renamed the Tate Gallery after its primary donor, sugar magnate Henry Tate (1819 - 1899).

The eastern side of the city was also in the process of a transformation, perhaps even more pronounced, with the construction of multiple new docks and basins to accommodate the tremendous quantity of ships arriving to and embarking from the city, which was in the process of becoming the world's commercial capital. These included the West and East India Docks, opened at the beginning of the 19th century, the Grand Surrey Canal and Surrey Commercial Docks, built soon after the East and West India Docks, and the London Docks, partially opened in 1815 but still under construction here. The following decade, with demand still exceeding the city's dock capacity, the St. Katharine Docks were constructed adjacent to the Tower of London.

Historical Context

London was changing dramatically at this time, shaped by the early stages of the Industrial Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. These affected the city in complex and unpredictable ways but were mostly to its benefit, especially the flight of capital and financiers from the Continent during the Napoleonic Wars, which further aided in the development of London's commercial enterprises (with the clearest example being Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1777 - 1836, who largely financed Britain's war against Napoleon). The use of the term Regent for several large public works refers to George, Prince of Wales, later Geroge IV (r. 1820 - 1830), who ruled between 1811 - 1820 as Prince Regent during the long mental illness of his father, George III.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by John Cary in 1818, with this edition being one of several published between 1787 and 1825, all of which are quite scarce now. It is Howgego's state 14 of 20 This particular example belonged to Alexander Boetefeur (c. 1790 - 1869), a member of the Boetefeur family of London merchants, one of several with recent roots in Hamburg. Only one institution, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, is noted as holding this edition in the OCLC, while the London Archives also hold an example as part of its Folded Maps Collection. Scarce to the market.