landmark in british cartography

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Landmarks in British CartographyAuthor(s): G. R. Crone, E. M. J. Campbell, R. A. SkeltonSource: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 128, No. 4 (Dec., 1962), pp. 406-426Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

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LANDMARKS IN BRITISH CARTOGRAPHY

G. R. CRONE, E. M. J. CAMPBELL and R. A. SKELTON

I. EARLY CARTOGRAPHIC ACTIVITY IN BRITAIN

G. R. CRONE

Theaim of this brief paper is first to consider an approach to the early history

of cartography, and then to suggest some directions in which research might be

profitably pursued. In the past, the interest in early maps has largely been anti-

quarian and bibliographical, and much work has been done in attempting to classifythese maps by a close comparison of their outlines and of the names included inthem. Too much importance should not, in my opinion, be attached to thesefeatures. Many of the individual points used in such differentiation can be shown tobe merely copyist's errors, and place-names have often been omitted, either at thewhim of the copyist, or because he was unable to find room for all the names in hissource material. This is not to argue that it cannot be established that one map maybe the copy of another; in fact a great deal of copying went on. It is now generallyaccepted that the largest class of medieval world maps was derived from a late

Roman prototype of the fourth century a.d. or earlier. The main features were com?mon to many; it is the details that are liable to differ, and to cause confusion.

This late Roman prototype was some centuries later altered fairly considerablyto bring it into conformity with Church doctrine, and it is these features which have

attracted the attention of previous commentators. Without suggesting that theseare not of great significance for an understanding of the medieval mind, I would

point out that an explanation of the presence of the rather jumbled town names,mountains and rivers on, for example, the Hereford Map, would be of greater im?

portance cartographically. As regards the town names, K. Miller has argued that

there is no evidence for the use of Roman itineraries. However, if these names are

plotted accurately on a modern map, it becomes clear that some of them at least are

derived from that source. A striking example is the great route across the north

Italian plain from Aosta to Ravenna. It can also be shown that the names on theNorth African coast are drawn from the same source, the Antonine Itinerary.

It may be accepted, therefore, that the Hereford World Map of c. a.d. 1300 em-

bodies material from late Roman itineraries; by applying a similar method of

analysis it can be shown that this particular map also draws upon medieval itineraries.

An example of this are the traces of the medieval pilgrim route from northern France

to S. lago de Compostella. The obscure word 'Recordanorum' near the eastern endof the Pyrenees can be equated with the 'Voie Regordane', the pilgrim route across

France. The crossing of the Pyrenees is indicated by the insertion of the town of

Yacca, on the Spanish side of the traverse, and Compostella itself is inserted in the

west. Evidence of contemporary interest and understanding of cartography is alsoshown by the insertion of two towns in Gascony which were prominent at the time

the map was drawn, i.e. Fronsac and Libourne. Similarly in Wales two 'new' towns,Caernarvon and Conway, are inserted. These instances are evidence that the Mapwas not regarded entirely as a historical or ecclesiastical document, but that this

version had been made by a draughtsman with some interest in cartography, or for

some one who shared this interest (Crone, 1954). This is not altogether unexpected,in view of Matthew Paris's work fifty years earlier, but it puts that work in a rather


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LANDMARKS N BRITISH CARTOGRAPHY 407

different perspective. There is another feature, which has apparently escaped notice

hitherto, which strengthens greatly this view; this is the general accuracy with whichthe river system of the Yorkshire Ouse-Trent is drawn. As can be seen from Figure

ia, the main components are indicated and the towns are remarkably accuratelyplaced in relation to them. No other rivers in Britain, except to a limited extent the

Thames, display this degree of local knowledge, and this applies generally to therivers elsewhere on the Map.

It can scarcely be mere coincidence that it is quite probable that much of the

Map was drawn at Lincoln, where Richard of Haldingham was Prebendary of

Sleaford, before moving to Hereford, and that he had access to map sources whichhave now disappeared. It should be noted that one of the earlier maps by MatthewParis {c. A.D. 1250) shows the northern portion of the river system in much the same

way, while another shows the southern portion similarly. The complete representa?

tion, however, is not to be found on any of his four maps. Whether the representa?tion on the Hereford Map rests on earlier sources or not, it is demonstrable that thisarea of England, or more exactly this river system, continued to be the best mappedin the country.

It is not my purpose to trace here the development of British maps in detail, as Ihave dealt with this elsewhere (Crone, 1961; 1962); the remainder of this paperexamines the historical cartography of one limited area.

The Gough Map, now dated at r.1360, develops this representation ofthe Ouse-Trent river system considerably (Fig. ib); the headwaters of the Trent and thePennine tributaries of the Ouse are indicated clearly, though direction is not always

preserved.Another

conspicuousfeature is the

oval-shaped Isleof

Axholm, whichin this form was preserved in subsequent maps for another two centuries, e.g. in the

Lily map of 1546. As has been pointed out by, among others, E. J. S. Parsons

(1959), the Gough Map appears to have been the standard map of England andWales during this period.

The next stage in the mapping of England and Wales developed in the first halfof the sixteenth century, partly influenced by the development of survey methodson the continent, in response to demands for more accurate maps from officials,statesmen and antiquarians (Crone, 1962). This activity bore fruit in the largeMercator map of 1564 and the county atlas of Christopher Saxton, 1579.

John Leland, theantiquarian,

who travelledwidely throughout England, sug?gested in 1546 that a map of England and Wales should be engraved, but nothing

appears to have been done immediately. He had progressed as far as to collect some

map material. One of his sketch-maps has survived, and, curiously enough, it coversthe Trent basin (Fig. ic). The drawing is rather crude, but Leland has disentangledthe Don from the Axeholm area and has a more correct idea than the Goughdraughtsman ofthe direction ofthe rivers (Sheppard, 1912).

Leland's proposal was taken up shortly afterwards by Lawrence Nowell, some ofof whose cartographical work has survived in manuscript, particularly a map of

England and Wales. His representation of the Ouse-Trent area is a little more care?fully done than Leland's, but on some points, e.g. the course of the Don, is lessaccurate (Fig. id).

Mercator states on his large map of 1564 that he was indebted to an unnamedEnglish correspondent. There has been much speculation as to the identity ofthis cartographer; the most favoured candidate is Nowell, whose map may havereached Mercator through John Dee. A comparison ofthe Trent-Ouse area on thesemaps shows that they have much in common, but it cannot be asserted that Mer?cator's map is an enlargement from Nowell's as we have it (Fig. ie). It is, of course,


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th (fttujh

le JSAercator

Figure I


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landmarks in british cartography 409

possible that Nowell's surviving map is a copy of a larger one by him and that it wasthis that Dee gave to Mercator, but on the existing evidence we cannot go furtherthan to accept a common source.

In an attempt to establish the relationship of Mercator's work with other con?temporary maps, and to throw light on the methods of compilation, I have appliedthe method used on the Hereford Map to Ortelius's map of 1570 (a reduced versionof Mercator's large map) and Humphry Lluyd's map of 1573. Unfortunately theavailable reproduction of Nowell's map is not sufficiently clear to be used for this

purpose.On Figure 2, the names from Lluyd and from Ortelius are distinguished, those

common to both being underlined. As a first step, I have inserted the main con-

JfamesjKam&sj

jnmt Lloyd.Jdrkby, Snaps,Barnard L/ \^ JVamesjfrum rtelius.Thinsk, Sruzpt,Castle Stockton. ? _ ?\~. . Jfames rom (joughmarked*

Bowes

?WensleyMtddUharrt

Rjoon'VovmZains?Pateley

?StokesUw

JVarduzllertoTi*

c \ v y ?Rievauhc&&&} \ .Tb\rsk* ?Hefmsley

\Newborcnxcjk.

?} obin- ood's Bay

'Bolton,Bridge

?Crayke^?Borcnuj bridge

VipUy. \'SuMmV

Xnar&sborotiqh

Weth&rby*Marewood*

SwiU^jton? I Sd*&.;?.WressU?U?Ufn* -Rathwell Hemin^brough ^3^....

Wdkefidd . FerrybrUge- *' BlacKtort* Pqntefract*

Thorne.

Systerkirk

Figure 2

temporary highroads. A fair proportion of the names, as would be expected, lie onor close to them, but the distribution of the others is

sporadic.It will also be

noticed that all the coastal names from Kingston-upon-Hull to Filey are commonto both, which is perhaps slight evidence for a common source in this area. If thesenames plus those on the highways are excluded, eighteen are found on Lluyd only,and eight on Ortelius. This analysis suggests that, allowing that some names mightbe omitted by the engraver for lack of space, each cartographer was interested in

particular areas, or, that they were using different sources. The majority of Lluyd'snames are in the west, and he may possibly have been concentrating on routes across


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410 LANDMARKS N BRITISH CARTOGRAPHY

the Pennines. Where they are apparently indicating the same feature, e.g. a routefrom York to Rievaulx Abbey, they give a different selection of place names.

It would appear, therefore, that Lluyd and the Mercator-Ortelius map had dif?

ferent sources for their place-names. Since Ortelius made a somewhat haphazardchoice from the large Mercator map, taking about 50 per cent of the names only, I

have also checked Lluyd's names against the latter, and the difference still holds;in the area around York, 50 per cent of Lluyd's names are not on Mercator. Lluyd,at least, can be ruled out as Mercator's anonymous correspondent.

Unfortunately, a sufficiently clear photograph of Nowell's map of England and

Wales was not available to allow all the names to be examined. One point, however,is clear?the close similarity between the coastal names. In the stretch from Patring-ton to Robin Hood's Bay, there are nine names on Mercator, and of these eightoccur on Nowell. In view of what has been said regarding the hydrology, and other

similarities, e.g. in Irish names, the relation of Nowell toMercator is

veryclose

indeed, but further work is needed in this direction.In conclusion there are one or two general points to be made. The evidence so far

available suggests that, like their predecessors, these Tudor maps were based on

itineraries, portions of which were inserted rather haphazardly into a common

framework. They do not seem, therefore, to be the result of a survey in the field in

any strict sense. This does not apply so strongly to the representation of the river

systems. It is perhaps not going beyond the evidence to suggest that between 1540and 1560, a good deal of work had been done to plot these more accurately, pro-

ceeding from a conventional pattern which goes back at least as far as the Bodleian

map.As far as the itinerary sources are concerned, it is curious that the earliest road

book listed by Sir George Fordham is no earlier than 1570?that is, Grafton's

Abridgement ofthe Chronicles ofEnglande. The tables contained in it, however, are

nothing like as detailed as would be required to compile, for example, Mercator's

1564 map.No doubt our history colleagues might be able to suggest possible sources for this

material. Finally, having studied sixteenth century maps from the above point of

view, one cannot but wonder whether all Saxton's county maps can have been in

fact the results of actual surveys by Saxton himself. The time required to visit each

countywould seem to be

prohibitivefor one individual; also a preliminary exam?

ination of his map of Yorkshire suggests that there are omissions of names similar

to those noted above.

ReferencesCrone, G. R. 1954 The world map in Hereford Cathedral. (Introd. to R.G.S. Reproductions

of early maps, v.)-1961 Early maps of the British Isles, ad. 1000-1579. (Introd. to R.G.S. Reproductions,

vii.)-1962 Early mapping of the British Isles. (Scottish Geogr. Mag. 78, no. 2.)Grafton, R. 1572 The high wayes . . . (In Abridgement ofthe Chronicles of Englande).Parsons, E. J. S. 1959 The Gough Map of Great Britain, c. a.d. 1360. Bodleian Library.

Sheppard,T.

1912The lost towns

oftheYorkshire coast. P.73.


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II. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHARACTERISTIC SHEETTO ENGLISH MAPS

E. M. J. CAMPBELL

An interesting theme in the history of cartography is the inception and develop?ment of the characteristic sheet or, more simply, the explanation of signs. Theneed to explain the conventions used on chorographical and topographical maps wasnot felt until the sixteenth century and then the first signs to be tabulated and

explained were those which denoted a 'difference of places'. As I have noted else?where (Campbell, 1952, pp. 426-7) the earliest map extant to carry a key appears tobe Peter Apian's map of Franconia?Das Francken Landt. Chorographia Francia?

engraved at Ingolstadt in 1533. On this map, the symbols denoting Schloss, DorfKloster, Markt and Stadt are tabulated and explained in the cartouche below the

representation of Franconia. In using variations of the tower motif and circle todenote the *difference of places', Peter Apian followed a convention established byItalian line-engravers in the fifteenth century, a convention which the line-engraversofthe maps in the Bologna edition of Ptolemy's Geogr aphia (1477) adopted from theminiaturists who illuminated maps and charts (Lynam, 1941, p. 21). This conventioncontinued to be used on small-scale maps engraved in Europe until well into the

eighteenth century.To come to my main theme?the introduction of explanation of signs on maps

drawn by English map makers. The map ofthe British Isles published at Rome in 1546?reproduced in R.G.S. Reproductions of early maps, VII (Crone, 1961)?has longbeen recognized as a landmark in the history of English cartography. In the presentcontext, the 1546 map is noteworthy because it is the first map of these islands?

and one of the earliest line-engraved maps known?to bear a key to the 'difference ofplaces' marked. As is well known, the circumstances of its publication are stillobscure. It is associated with George Lily from the initials G.L.A. engraved in thelower border of the principal cartouche and with other unknown Englishmen fromthe signature Anglorum studio & diligentia within the cartouche. Neither the en-

graver nor the publisher is known, nor can we be certain that the former workedfrom a fair copy prepared by one of the unknown Angli, or from a draft drawn byLily himself. Edward Lynam showed that there are strong grounds for believingthat Lily drew a map of the British Isles, but we cannot teil to what extent he was

responsible for the engraving which bears his initials and device (Lynam, 1934,

pp. 2 and 6). The Italianization of a number of place-names may indicate that theengraver worked from a draft prepared by an unknown Italian collaborator. Thuswe cannot teil who decided to explain the signs for Metrop[olitanus], Episcopatus,Comitatus and Castra. The first edition of this map is rare, but it is noteworthy thatof the eight re-issues or derivatives printed between 1549 and 1589, only two bear

keys to the town stamps employed. The earlier of these, printed at Antwerp in

1549, adds the symbol used to denote Communia to the four signs explained on the

original; signed Per Joannem Mollijns, this derivative is rare (at the British Museum,Maps C.2. cc.2 (7), there is a photograph of the copy in the Bibliotheque Nationaleat Paris). The other copy to bear a key, printed at Venice in 1556, defines only thefour

symbolsof

thefirst

edition; it is signed Apud Iouannem Andream Valuasionem(there is a copy at the British Museum). The first edition is rare and may havebeen 'issued in a limited edition and not for general sale' (Lynam, 1934, p. 6); thusit is unlikely that it introduced many Englishmen to the device of explaining themeaning of signs within the framework of a map sheet. The re-issue of 1555 musthave been the edition best known in England. It was by Thomas Geminus who


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412 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHARACTERISTIC HEET TO ENGLISH MAPS

purchased the original copper plates which had been brought to England, but he,or another, erased the symbols from the margin of the cartouche. No other map of

the British Isles published in the sixteenth century carried a key. This want of so

convenient a device for the better interpretation of a map was in accordance withgeneral cartographical practice on the Continent at the time.1 This is un?

doubtedly why the county maps of Saxton want for legends. The conventions usedon his maps were in the style of topographical maps engraved in the Netherlands;Flemish engravers rarely added an explanation of signs. Thus explanations to the

conventions employed were given on only five maps in the first edition (1570) of

the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of Abraham Ortelius. Very little is known about

Saxton's methods of work, but his enormous task of mapping the whole of Eng?land and Wales within the space of seven years (1572-1579) can have left him little

time in which to prepare fair drafts for the engravers. So far as is known it was

Thomas Seckford, an official of the Queen's Court, who recruited and paidthe

engravers of Saxton's maps and made himself responsible for the publication of the

atlas. It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that he also arranged for fair drafts

of the maps to be prepared for the engravers and that Flemish draughtsmen in exile

in London were employed; they alone would have had the necessary experience.Fourteen years after the publication of Saxton's Atlas, the first map engraved in

England to bear an explanation of signs was issued?Norden's well known map of

Middlesex which accompanied the first part of his Speculum Britanniae (1593). On

this map, what Norden called the 'difference of places' is distinguished by an

ingenious but simple set of characters?variations on the open-circle with central

prickconvention. The fourteen characters are tabulated and

explainedin an en-

tablature (Plate 1).Norden's map of Middlesex was a marked advance on his first known map?the

crude sketch which accompanied his meagre description of Northamptonshire which

he had completed some four years earlier.2 This sketch is noteworthy because it

is the earliest known map drafted by an Englishman to bear a marginal index of

letters and numbers. Apart from the introduction of this device, the map showed no

advance on the work of Saxton; indeed it is clearly a crude reduction of Saxton's

map of Northamptonshire. On it Norden used only two signs?a simple building

stamp for Northampton (and for the county towns of the adjoining counties, if

theyfell within the framework of the map) and an open symbol with central prick

for all other places. Thus there was little need for a key.It has long been conjectured that Norden was introduced to the device of insert-

ing a key to his symbols by the herald and topographer William Smith, who had

himself probably first become familiar with it?as with the idea of the marginalindex of letters and numbers?during his long residence in Nurnberg (Skelton,

1960, p. 49). In the design of the earliest known draft of his own map of Cheshire,dated 1585 (now MS Harleian 1046 folio 132 at the British Museum), Smith ex?

plained his conventions for market towns, castles, parish churches, houses and

villages (the last being represented by the simple open circle with central prick). A

similar set of conventions was also employed on the 1588 draft of the same county

(now MS Rawlinson B 282 at the Bodleian Library) and on Smith's draft ofStaffordshire (now MS Ashmolean 765 e 2 at the Bodleian Library). His MS mapof Lancashire (1598) has similar conventions but does not bear a key (now MS

1 Thus of one set of maps bound together by the Italian publisher Lafreri under the generaltitle Geografia Tavole Moderne de la Maggior Parte del Mondo di diversi autori, 1560-1570, onlyone bears a notarum explicatio; it shows the sites of religious houses in Flanders.

2 At the British Museum, there is a photostat copy of Norden's holograph MS of North?amptonshire with map, now at the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris.


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THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHARACTERISTIC HEET TO ENGLISH MAPS 413

Harleian 6159 folio 2 at the British Museum). Recently, Mr. Skelton has shown thatthere is, in fact, 'testimony to direct communication between the two men, whichmust have begun before Norden completed, his survey of Northamptonshire

(Skelton, 1960, p. 50).The great improvement to the lay-out of his map of Middlesex suggests that

Norden may well have modelled it on that of a map, now lost, which Smith broughtback from Niirnberg. Or he may owe its design at least in part to discussion withPeter van den Keere, almost certainly the engraver, who two years earlier had en?

graved a map of Ireland (Hyberniae Novissima Descriptio) for his brother-in-law,Jodocus Hondius (Hind, 1952, p. 204). On the other hand, it may well be thatNorden himself invented the ingenious but simple set of characters employed on his

map of Middlesex in an effort to reduce the cost of publication of the first parte of his

Speculum Britanniae. We cannot be certain, but the last is possible because it is

known that failing to find a patron he arranged to publish at his own expense thefull work including the map of the county and the two 'birds-eye' plans of Londonand Westminster; and that it was only at the last moment that he received a sub?stantial contribution towards the cost of publication (Lynam, 1950, p. 17). Cer?

tainly the simple set of characters is eminently suitable for a map on a scale of

approximately 1:192,500 and one which included a substantial amount of detail.Similar sets of characters to those employed on his map of Middlesex were also

used on Norden's map of Surrey (1594), engraved by Charles Whitwell, and on his

map of Sussex (1595 ?) engraved by Christofer Schwytzer. Each of these mapscarried a key to the 'difference of places'; the map of Sussex distinguished beacons

by a neat pictograph?a beacon crowned hill?which was explained in the key.By 1594, Norden had also completed 'Speculi Britanniae Pars: an historicall and

chorographicall description of the county of Essex'. Of the three surviving manuscriptcopies of his map of Essex, the most interesting in the present context is that whichhe presented to the Earl of Essex (now Add. MS. 33,769 in the British Museum), forit alone included a key to the characters representing market towns, parishes, ham?

lets, castles, houses of nobility and houses of gentlemen. A fine manuscript copyalso survives of Norden's map of Hampshire (B.M., Add. MSS 31,853). It also hasa key (Plate 2), and is of particular interest as the line-engraving of his map of

Hampshire [1595?] is known today only in revisions published by Peter Stent

(c. 1650)and

JohnOverton

(c. 1680).xPeter Stent's

editionof

c. 1650is

interestingbecause he inserted a title to the key?'Explanation of the Map'?and also extendedthe cartouche to include the pictographs denoting 'woody places', 'divisions forhundreds', rivers and bridges (no roads are marked either on the surviving MS copyor on Stent's printed edition), and parks.2 Thus for the first time the key to an

English county map was extended beyond the customary settlement types andbeacons. The only other of Norden's county maps known today is that of Hert-fordshire; it is known chiefly through the line-engraving of William Kip (1598).This version does not bear a key to the symbols employed, but it is impossible todeduce anything from this omission. The only known MS copy of the map ofHertfordshire also lacks a

key (nowMS

521in Lambeth Palace

Library).The desirability of including an explanation of signs does not appear to have beenappreciated by any of Norden's contemporaries, other than William Smith, yetthey must have been familiar with his maps. Neither Symonson nor his engraverCharles Whitwell thought it necessary to include a key to the symbols employed onthe former's map of Kent (1596);?yet Whitwell would have been familiar with the

1 Camden based his map of Hampshire on a draft of the county by Norden.3 There is a copy of P. Stent's version at the R.G.S.


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414 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHARACTERISTIC HEET TO ENGLISH MAPS

device, having, as noted above, engraved Norden's map of Surrey, some two yearsbefore he was employed by Symonson. Of the maps in Camden's Britannia (1607),only those based on Norden's maps, including his map of Kent, now lost, have keys

to the conventions employed, but they are limited to the signs showing the dif?ference of places. There are no entablatures of signs to the maps engraved byJodocus Hondius in John Speed's Theatre of the empire of Great Britain (folio ed.,1611). Furthermore, the neat conventions adopted by Norden found no permanentplace in the English cartographical alphabet. His contemporaries and their suc-cessors preferred variations on the tower symbol embracing the simple open circle,sometimes with a central prick, to his 'variations' on the open circle alone. In thisconnection it is interesting to set the key to Norden's map of Surrey alongside thatof Surrey {Surriae Comitatus, n.d.) in the so-called anonymous series (Plate 3).Edward Heawood showed that there is testimony to the maps in the anonymous

series having been engraved in the Amsterdam workshop of Jodocus Hondius about1602 (Heawood, 1932, p. 5). Eleven of these maps carry an explanation of signssimilar to that on the map of Surrey; that of Essex has a different design. This mapof Essex (1602) is exceptional in being the only one of the anonymous series to be

signed by Hans Woutneel?over a half-erased inscription attributing the map to

Christopher Saxton (see Edward Heawood, 1926, p. 330). Woutneel's imprint isalso on the MS of Worcestershire?but not on the engraved version of the county;see Skelton, 1960, p. 49. The plates for this anonymous series had a long life; pullswere still being used in the seventeenth century. Heawood believed that Nordenwas probably associated with the production of the original edition, but who pre?

paredthe drafts

for the engraverremained a

mysteryuntil a few

years agowhen

Mr. R. V. Tooley discovered four manuscript maps which are clearly drafts pre?pared for the engraver of the maps of Cheshire, Hertfordshire, Warwickshire andWorcestershire in the anonymous series (Skelton, 1960, p. 50, n. 10). These

drafts, now in the British Museum, have been described by Mr. Skelton who hasshown that they 'point with a high degree of probability to William Smith as the

cartographer of the Anonymous 1602-3 series and the intermediary by whom

unpublished information from Norden, Burton, and perhaps other topographerswas collected for it' (Skelton, 1960, p. 49). Perhaps the most interesting ofthe fourdrafts in the present context is that of Hertfordshire which is an enlarged and cor-rected version of Norden's

mapof

1598.In its lower

righthand corner

(Plate 4),there is a notarum explicatio in which the symbols are given in English in one hand,and in Latin in another hand. Both languages were employed on the copper plate.On the drafts, the 'difference of places' is shown, as Mr. Skelton has already noted,

by signs in the same style as those used by Smith on his MS map of Cheshire, 1585.The engraver employed the map conventions then current in Amsterdam (Skelton,1960, p. 49, pl. XIX facing p. 50).

During the seventeenth century, the number of variations on the tower symbol

representing the difference of places increased and the explanatory tables likewise

grew. How overworked the tower symbol became during the century is shown bythe 'explination' [sic] on John Ogilby's map of Kent (1670) which employed it with

minor modifications to distinguish cities, archbishoprics, bishoprics, deaneries, shiretowns, corporations, market towns, fair towns and Cinque Ports (Plate 5). But even

Ogilby did not consider it necessary to explain the signs for woodland, parks,

bridges and other features.The extension of the explanation of signs to a more or less full characteristic

sheet took place in England, as on the continent, during the eighteenth century. It

was during this century that topographical maps on the scale of 1163,360 or greater


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416 THE ORIGINS OF THE ORDNANCE URVEY OF GREAT BRITAIN

century, and many of them had as their basis no more than a road-traverse with

topographical in-filling (Gardiner, 1737, ch. v).Richard Gough, writing in 1780, singled out for particular censure the map of

Sussex published by Richard Budgen in 1724, which (he considered) 'deserves butthe name of a map at most, and even as such is neither correct nor well executed'.To these strictures he was able to add the more encouraging announcement that'Yeakell and Gardner, surveyors, propose . . . to publish a topographical survey' of

Sussex, on a scale of 2 inches to a mile, and that the first sheet, dated 1778, hadbeen 'engraved . . . under the patronage of the Duke of Richmond' (Gough, 178,II, pp. 297-8).

The three men named?Thomas Yeakell, William Gardner and the 3 rd Duke of

Richmond?were to play leading parts not only in the mapping of Sussex but alsoin the national survey of England.

The Duke of Richmond.?Charles Lennox, 3 rd Duke of Richmond, was born in 1735and succeeded to the title in 1750 (Plate 7). After graduating in mathematics at the

University of Leiden in 1753, he served for seven years in the army and there?

after turned to politics, in which his opinions were liberal to the point of

radicalism. In March 1782 he was appointed Master-General of the Ordnance,then a Cabinet office. The Duke resigned this post a year later (April 1783), but

resumed it under Pitt in December 1783 and retained it until 1795. Of this, the

climactic, phase of his career more will be said later. He was a conscientious publicservant; but while his political friends (such as Horace Walpole) respected his

intelligence and integrity, his adversaries could represent him as wilful, ambitious

and inconsistent. King GeorgeIII remarked that there was 'no man in his domi-

nions by whom he had been so much offended, and no man to whom he was so

much indebted, as the Duke of Richmond'. The Duke was a man of wide and eagerintellectual curiosity, whose bounty was enjoyed by painters, engravers and archi-

tects, by mathematicians, instrument-makers and surveyors. As a landowner he

was active in consolidating, enlarging and developing his estates round Goodwood,in West Sussex; to the lands in West Lavant, Singleton and Halnaker Park which

he inherited, he added the manors of East Dean (about 1760), Boxgrove, Halnaker

and Tangmere (in 1765), East and Mid Lavant (1775 and 1777).Thomas Yeakell and William Gardner.?Whether the Duke's patronage of surveyinghad its source in the

managementof his

greatestates at Goodwood, or in his mathe?

matical interests, or in both, we do not know. His household accounts testify to his

regular employment of Thomas Yeakell as a salaried surveyor from 1 November

1758; to his provision for having Yeakell instructed in mathematics by 'Mr Cowley',

presumably John Lodge Cowley, Professor at the Royal Military Academy, in

February-March 1759; and to his employment of James Sampson in 1763-6 and of

William Gardner from about 1767 as surveyors on regular wages (West Sussex

R.O., Goodwood Papers, Ae/i, Af/i). The wages-book notes against Sampson'sname 'run away Aug* 1766, hanged May 11, 1768' (this was for setting fire to General

Conway's library); but Yeakell and Gardner were to remain in the Duke's service

until, in 1782 and 1784 respectively, they entered that of the Board of Ordnance, in

which they were to remain for the rest of their lives. The Duke of Richmond seemsto be alone among eighteenth century landowners in maintaining professional sur?

veyors in regular salaried service.No record of Thomas Yeakell's birth has been found; his surname suggests that

he was of German origin, perhaps picked up by the Duke on his military campaignsin the 1750's. He worked as an engraver as well as surveyor; in the latter capacitybe carried on a private practice, from about 1770, in association with Gardner, no


13/30

i. Explanation of signs on John Norden's map of Middlesex, 1593

2. Detail from John Norden's MS map of Hampshire, now in the British Museum


14/30

^k'Z ty


15/30

Slll

5. Detail from John Ogilbys map of Kent, i6jo

W^^M^^^M

^>. ^,-^//;.

6. Explanation of signs on Richard Budgen's map of Sussex, 1724.


16/30

7. Charles, 3rd Duke of Richmond, by Romney


17/30

8. The Goodwood terriers of Yeakell and Gardner {details): above, r., ist recension

{20": 1 mile) and l. 2nd recension {6": 1 mile); below, jrd recension {2": 1 mile)


18/30

g. Six-inch map of the Chichester district, engraved by Glot:detail {reduced)

10. Two-inch map of Sussex by Yeakell and by Gardner: detail {reduced)


19/30

ii. Six-inch map of the Plymouth region, surveyed by Gardner, 1784-6: detail

{reduced)

12. The Trigonometrical Survey: two-inch drawing of West Sussex, 1804-5, detail

(reduced)


20/30

s.?

a ^?

v5-? 8S'?-?

ss

e> ? 2"^

(/f^*l:^%.


21/30

THE ORIGINS OF THE ORDNANCE URVEY OF GREAT BRITAIN 417

plans by Yeakell alone being known. He lived at Westhampnett, near Goodwood,and his name appears in the parish registers from 1764; there his son Thomas, who

followed his father into service as a surveyor at Goodwood and under the Board of

Ordnance, was born in 1762/3, and there the father was buried in 1787. WilliamGardner was married at Boxgrove in November 1770, being described as a widower

aged 30, so that he must have been born in 1739 or -40; his earliest private com?mission for an estate plan, outside the Duke's service, was in 1767; and since a gooddeal of work by him alone, not in collaboration with Yeakell, survives, we can

identify his cartographic style with more assurance.From about 1765, or a little later, Yeakell in association with Gardner executed a

fine series of terriers, with maps, of the Duke of Richmond's estates and manors.These surveys, now in the West Sussex Record Office, are presented in a form both

ingenious and original?indeed (so far as can be ascertained) unique in their period.

There are three versions of the terriers (Plate 8). The earliest is entirely inmanuscript, drawn in the conventions of estate plans, generally on a scale of 20inches to a mile. In the second recension, the maps are cut-outs of an engravedmap on a scale of 6 inches to a mile, with the holdings coloured; the device elimi-nated the costly process of copying by hand. This 6-inch map, which was never

published, is the earliest printed delineation, in English cartography, of an extensivetract of country?some 72 square miles?on so large a scale (Plate 9). The maps ofthe third recension are similar cut-outs from engraved maps at 2 inches to a mile.Two engravers executed the plates for the printed 'base-maps' used in the secondand third recensions: Thomas Yeakell and Glot, apparently a French engraver.

In the Goodwood accountsregular payments

to Yeakell continue until Christmas

1782, and to Gardner until Midsummer 1784 (West Sussex R.O., Goodwood Papers,A/4). As we have seen, both men, in addition to their salaried work at Goodwood,carried on private practice as surveyors. Their most ambitious enterprise was the2-inch map of Sussex announced by Gough?the 'Great Survey', as it was called

(Plate 10). This offered a wealth of detail more common in large-scale plans than in

county maps, as Gough, evidently quoting from a (now lost) prospectus, indicates:it would 'not only contain an accurate plan of every town and village, but everyfarm-house, barn, and garden, will have its place. Every inclosure . . . with thenature of its fence, whether bank, ditch, pale, or wall, will be described; every road

public or private, every bridleway

and footpath

will be delineated; the rivers withtheir bends, fords, and bridges and each rivulet will be traced. The hills and vallieswill be clearly distinguished from the low lands, and their shape and even heightmade sensible to the eye' (Gough, 1780, II, pp. 297-8). The county map was infact the child of the surveys of the Richmond manors carried out before this byYeakell and Gardner; and the cartographic technique foreshadows that to be em?

ployed by Gardner a few years later in his surveys for the Board of Ordnance.Only four sheets of the Great Survey, covering the southern half of the county,

were published; the first three dated 1778, 1780 and 1783, the fourth undated. Thefinancial return had been disappointing, but the cessation of work on the map neednot be ascribed wholly to this circumstance. By this time both surveyors, and theirpatron, were in a different service. On 18 April 1782 the Duke took his seat at theBoard of Ordnance as Master-General (P.R.O., W.O. 47/99). On 30 October hewrote from London to Yeakell at Goodwood about an 'Appointment in the DrawingRoom', i.e. the office of the Ordnance draftsmen in the Tower of London; andYeakell replied expressing his wish to have the post. The Duke wrote back, onNovember 1, that he could not 'absolutely promise' it? but would 'endeavour to getit done for you' (P.R.O., W.O. 46/14). On December n he appointed Yeakell

28


22/30


Chief Draftsman at the Tower, in succession to Mr. George Haines retired (P.R.O.,W.O. 47/100). In 1784 we shall find Gardner conducting surveys for the Board inthe Plymouth area; and in 1787 he too came on its regular establishment.

The Board of Ordnance.?The Board of Ordnance, as reconstituted by RoyalWarrant of King Charles II in 1683, had wide duties and manifold powers (Clode,1869, I, pp. 74-5; and passim). It was responsible for commissariat and ordnance

supplies to both the Army and the Navy; it controlled the engineer and artilleryarms; and the Master-General was ex officio Colonel of the Royal Regiment of

Artillery and of the Corps of Engineers. In this capacity he was responsible for

fortifications and the military defence of the kingdom. Until 1828 the Master-General had a seat in the Cabinet and was its principal military adviser; the Boardwas eventually dissolved in 1855.

Military surveying and map-making was an engineer service, supervised by the

Commanding Engineer of a district or formation, under the direction of the Board.A large civil establishment of surveyors and draftsmen was maintained for this work.

These men normally entered the service of the Board, as cadets in the DrawingRoom, at a very early age; Charles Blaskowitz, for instance, was only twelve yearsold when, as an Ordnance cadet, he surveyed Narragansett Harbour in 1764. Theyrose through four grades, from the highest of which the Chief Draftsman and his

deputy were normally selected; and they were eligible for commissions into the

Engineers and Artillery. Their training was therefore entirely in military survey;their duties included instrumental survey in the field, compilation, drawing, correc-

tion and copying of maps, and the custody of the maps and plans in the Drawing

Room.Promotion usually followed seniority, and the introduction of Yeakell?a civilian

?at the top of the ladder, over the heads of men with thirty or forty years' service,can hardly have been popular. This appointment is characteristic of the Duke's

resolute but urbane methods in public business. He carried out a thorough reor-

ganization of the Ordnance Office, introducing stricter control of expenditure, new

establishments, better terms of service. Some of his measures have a modern look;

just as in 1764 he had forbidden his servants to receive tips and had raised their

wages in compensation (West Sussex R.O., Goodwood Papers, Af/i), so in 1783 he

obtained a Royal Warrant increasing the salaries of the Ordnance surveyors and

draftsmenand

prohibitingtheir

acceptanceof

any 'Gratuity, Fee,or Reward'

(P.R.O., W.O. 54/217).In his first years at the Ordnance Office, the Duke made proposals to Shelburne

for fortifying the naval dockyards of Portsmouth and Plymouth 'against a regular

Siege' (P.R.O., W.O. 46/18). They encountered violent Parliamentary opposition,and in the debates 'his Grace's passion for engineering' was likened to an old man

falling in love. The Duke's plans for new defence works were based on recom?

mendations made by Lieut-Colonel William Roy (as Inspector-General of Coasts)after a tour of the dockyard towns in the summer of 1770, brought up to date by

Roy in 1779, and confirmed by a commission in 1783 (P.R.O., W.O. 30/54, arts.

10-15).New maps were needed for the work, and this was the occasion which brought

William Gardner into Ordnance service, obviously at the Duke's instance. He was

commissioned to survey the Plymouth region; his instructions were issued on 11

February 1783 (P.R.O., W.O. 46/18); a year later, on 5 February 1784?still as a

private practitioner?he signed a contract with the Board of Ordnance (P.R.O.,W.O. 47/119); and his map of the area, at 6 inches to a mile, was completed in the

next two years. This fine map, whose style of drawing closely resembles that of


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Gardner's estate plans, was never printed; but it was to become the prototype forfuture work by the Board's surveying draftsmen (Plate 11).

On 3 April 1787 Thomas Yeakell presented his last monthly return as Chief

Draftsman; he had made his will on March 30, and he died at some date beforeMay 30 (Wills, P.C.C. Major 307; P.R.O., W.O. 47/109). The Duke seized the

opportunity to reconstruct the surveying service (P.R.O., W.O. 47/109). Thomas

Chamberlain, the next in line, was promoted Chief Draftsman in Yeakell's place;Gardner was appointed to a new office of Chief Surveying Draftsman, 'to rank nextto the Chief Draftsman'; and 'a Surveying party was to be formed, to consist of theChief Surveyor and a certain number of Draftsmen'. Besides their established pay,this party was to receive zd an acre for surveying and drawing two fair plans, at 6inches to the mile, 'in the same manner as those done by Mr Wm Gardner of theenvirons of Plymouth, with these additions, viz1. that they are to be coloured and

that the height of the principal Hills from the level with the Sea and their distancein the straight line from each other should be expressed in red Ink'. Of this zd an

acre, the Chief Surveyor was to receive *2d, and his responsibility was 'to take greatTryangles, a general sketch of the hills and their heights . . . and calculate all the

triangles and was also to fill in, if he had afterwards any leisure'. All work was to becertified by 'the Engineer when there was one'.

Gardner's surveying party went into the field at once. In the summer and autumnof 1787, with five other surveyors, he surveyed Guernsey and Jersey at 6 inches tothe mile; two of his assistants?Thomas Yeakell the younger and Thomas Gream?were Sussex men. Both maps were engraved, the former in 1787, the latter in 1795

From now on, the Ordnance records in the Public Record Office show Gardner con-tinuously employed in military surveys and in the field-work, computation and map-drawing arising from the trigonometrical survey begun by General Roy in 1784 andresumed in 1791.General Roy.?As a young military engineer William Roy had made his mark withthe survey of Scotland executed, on a scale of 1000 yards to 1 inch, in the years 1747-55 (Macdonald, 1917, pp. 163-6). Although (as Roy wrote at the end of his life)this was 'rather to be considered as a magnificent military sketch, than a veryaccurate map of a country', it brought to light the aptitude for survey whichdominated his career. In 1763, as Deputy-Quartermaster-General, he first formu-lated a

planfor

triangulationof the whole

country,in which the

mapof Scotland

would be incorporated. The scale of the map was to be 1 inch to 1 mile. Manyyears later he wrote: 'On the conclusion of the peace of 1763 it came for the firsttime under the consideration of Government to make a general survey of the wholeisland at public cost' (Roy, 1785). This project, which was to be directed by Roy,seems to have been turned down as 'a Work of much time and labour, and attendedwith great Expence to the Government' (Windsor, Georgian MS 314).

In 1765 Roy had been appointed Inspector-General of Coasts under the Board ofOrdnance, with responsibility for coastal defence. To his pen we may attribute anunsigned scheme, dated 24 May 1766, in the Royal Archives at Windsor, for making'a General Military Map of England'

(Windsor, GeorgianMS

314).In this

modest project, which could be executed 'at a moderate Expence', Roy proposed tomake use of existing materials by correcting and combining the published countymaps and running 'Serieses [sic] of Triangles along the Coast, and along the Ridgesof Hills and principal Rivers'; but his grander geodetic vision, 'to render the Workof more extensive and general use', is not concealed. The 'great Base of the firstTriangle serving as the Foundation of the Work' was to be 6 or 8 miles long,reduced to sea level; and the principal triangles were to be carried along 'one grand


24/30


Meridian line, thro' the whole extent of the Island, marked by Obelisks . . , likethat thro' France'. In this way an are of 8*2 degrees of the meridian would be mea?

sured, 'intermediate to those measured in France and at the Polar Circle'; and a

more accurate determination of the 'spheroidical figure of the Earth' could beobtained. Emphasis is laid on precise delineation of the topography, 'with respectto Military purposes'; and Roy concludes that, 'if particular Buildings & Inclosuresor Fields were to be represented truely topographically', a proper scale for the mapwould be i inch, or ix4 inches, to the mile.

Here, not for the first time nor for the last, we find Roy's mind ranging beyond the

requirements of military engineering and coastal defence, to which he was bound byhis Ordnance duties, to those of a national survey?and indeed making use of theformer to promote his concept of the latter.

Roy's second project was stopped by the American War, and his ideas had time

to mature. In 1783?'for my own private amusement', as he tells us?he measureda base 'across the fields' between Marylebone and St Pancras, and observed a

series of triangles in and round London (Roy, 1785, p. 388). In 1784, under the

auspices of the King and the Royal Society, operations were begun for connectingthe observatories of Greenwich and Paris by triangulation. Roy measured a base of

five miles on Hounslow Heath, and three years later the triangles to Dover and

across the Straits were completed (Roy, 1785; Roy, 1790). The instrument used

was the 3-foot altazimuth theodolite?the 'great theodolite' they called it?con?

structed by Jesse Ramsden for the Royal Society at the King's expense. This gaveazimuthal readings within 2 seconds of are at 70 miles. Although Roy, a temperate

man, was driven by Ramsden's procrastination to the use of languageso violent

that it had to be excised from his Royal Society paper of 1790 before printing, it

was upon the technological accomplishment of the London instrument-makers that

the standards set by Roy for the national survey depended (Plates 13, 14).The Trigonometrical Survey.?Roy envisaged both his surveys of the invasion coasts

and his triangulation of south-east England as (in his words) 'the foundation of a

general survey of the British Islands' (Roy, 1790). In his letter of 28 June 1784 to

the Royal Society, he recalled 'that many years ago it was in agitation to carry on a

survey ofthe whole Island, whereof I was to have had the Direction', and he recom?

mended Hounslow Heath for the base-line as 'being very conveniently situated for

. . .any

futureoperations

HisMajesty may please

to order to be extended . . . to

more remote parts ofthe Island' (Royal Society Minutes, 29 July 1784).The specifications for the national survey are prescribed in Roy's writings. At

the end of his Royal Society papers of 1787 and 1790 he laid down the plan for the

basic geodetic and trigonometrical operations. Among his papers in the Public

Record Office is an undated (and unpublished) memorandum, written by him for

the Duke of Richmond and setting out 'general Instructions for the Engineers to be

employed in surveying the Coast and Districts of the Country near it' (P.R.O.,W.O. 30/54, art. 22). Later?evidently between 1785 and 1790?Roy revised this

paper as a directive for a map of 'the Island in general' on a scale of 1 inch to a mile.

The revisions show how Roy's professional thought came increasingly to be directed

towards the project ofthe national survey, for which in fact the document as amendedfurnishes the specification; and, as the technical charter of the first Trigonometrical

Survey, it is printed below (pp. 423-6).Roy's base-measurement and triangulation had been carried out with technical

assistance, in men and equipment, furnished by the Duke of Richmond as Master-

General ofthe Ordnance; but when he died in June 1790 no regular establishment

existed for continuing the trigonometrical survey which he had begun.


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The Duke in due course provided for the prosecution of Roy's work. In June

1791 he took 'His Majesty's Pleasure for proceeding with the TrigonometricalOperation begun by the late Major General Roy', and he 'procured from Mr

Ramsden a proper Instrument for this Purpose' (P.R.O., W.O. 46/22). On July 10the Master-General informed the Board that he had appointed 'Major Williams andLieutenant Mudge of the Royal Regiment of Artillery to carry on the Trigono?metrical Survey with the Assistance of Mr Dalby' (P.R.O., W.O. 46/22). Underthese officers the surveying draftsmen of the Board's civil establishment were to be

employed on the work.The 'proper Instrument' was the second 3-foot theodolite (now in the Science

Museum), constructed by Ramsden to the order of the East India Company for

triangulation in India, but not delivered because of a business disagreement(Phillimore, 1945, pp. 164-6). As Close points out, the suggestion made by the

earliest official historians of the survey (Mudge, 1899, p. 204), that the 'casualopportunity' of purchasing 'a very fine instrument' prompted the Duke to resumethe survey, 'appears to be quite inadequate' (Close, 1926, p. 29); and it can hardlybe doubted that the measures which he took in 1791 were dictated equally by con?siderations of national policy, by his personal interest in topographical survey, and

by his desire (as Colby wrote many years later) 'to support the scientific reputationof the Country and to improve the Corps under his Command' (P.R.O., W.O.

44/614).Roy's revised memorandum to the Duke had defined the principles on which the

survey was conducted. The primary tasks of base-measurement and 'determination

of the great triangles' were assigned to the senior engineer on the spot; 'the filling inor surveying of the interior parts of the great triangles', to subordinate surveyorsusing 'the small Theodolets and chains provided'. They were to make measuredtraverses of the coast, river-courses, roads and lanes. Not only were boundaries of

'Forests, Woods, Heaths, Commons, or Marshes' to be surveyed; but also 'in theenclosed parts ... all the Hedges, and other Boundaries of Fields are to be care?

fully laid down'. Such detail could not be represented 'on a less scale than twoInches to a mile'; this was in fact the standard scale adopted for the survey and

manuscript maps. All these, wrote Roy, 'may afterwards be reduced to a Scale ofone Inch to a mile for the Island in general'; and this was to be the scale of the map

engraved from the surveyors' drawings.In 1791 Roy's Hounslow Heath base was remeasured, and in the following sum?mer triangulation was carried southward through Surrey and West Sussex. In

1793-4 tne surveying parties were in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. The re?mainder of Sussex and most of Kent were triangulated in 1795-6. William Gardner,who in 1794 succeeded Chamberlain as Chief Draftsman (his former office of Chief

Surveying Draftsman being abolished), was engaged in all these operations; and

Mudge acknowledged, in 1792, 'the services of Mr. Gardner . . . by whose assis?tance, from his intimate knowledge of the County of Sussex, we have been able todetermine, with certainty, the names of many places, which we might otherwisehave considered as doubtful'. In

setting upthe station at

Rook's Hill, justeast of

the Trundle at Goodwood, Gardner was indeed on familiar ground (Plate 15).While he was promoting the national survey, the Duke of Richmond did not

neglect the mapping of his own county. In June 1791 Gardner and ThomasGream announced a i-inch map of Sussex, to satisfy 'the wish of many Gentlementhat if the Great Survey [that is, the 2-inch map of Yeakell and Gardner] cannot becompleted, one at least as good as that of any other County should be published'.(Gream had resigned from the Ordnance service in April 1791 to take up private


26/30


practice.) In the summer of 1792, Mudge tells us, 'at the time of our visiting thestation on Hindhead . . . we received instructions from his Grace the Duke of

Richmond, to be minute in our Survey of Sussex; and to furnish Mr. Gardner . . .

with materials for correcting a Map of that county, intended, at some future period,to be published under the patronage of his Grace'. During the next two years,accordingly, 'Mr. Gardner generally attended us, having been supplied with suffi?cient materials for correcting all the southern and western parts of his map' (Mudge,1799, pp. xi-xii).

The map advertised for 1792 was not ready until June 1795, when it was publishedby William Faden with a dedication to the Duke. The title states that the surveywas 'begun by W. Gardner and the late T. Yeakell, completed by Thomas Gream'.

Although on half the scale, the topographical survey is little less detailed than thatof the 2-inch map. As it is constructed from the data of the official triangulation,

this might well be considered the first printed map of the Trigonometrical Survey.In these years Gardner was also kept busy with computation and map-drawing

for the Trigonometrical Survey. Mudge recorded that 'a great part of the objects

[i.e. trigonometrical points] in Sussex, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight wereverified by Mr Gardner'; in 1795 he was observing triangles in Kent with the

theodolite; and he checked the trigonometrical data for Essex and parts of Suffolkand Hertfordshire. In 1799 he completed 'in a masterly manner' the drawing ofthei-inch map of Kent which was published, from Ordnance materials, by Faden on1 January 1801, ten months after Gardner's death.Conclusion.?The Duke of Richmond was dismissed from the office of Master-

General of the Ordnance in 1795, eleven years before his death. WilliamGardner

died in Ordnance service in March 1800. In December of the same year, the sur?

veyors on the Board's civil establishment were by Royal Warrant constituted into a

'Corps of Royal Military Surveyors and Draftsmen, to be subject to the Rules and

Discipline of War' (P.R.O., W.O. 55/421); the Corps was disbanded, as a post-war

economy, in 1817 (P.R.O., W.O. 44/517).In 1799 Mudge had written that 'in the Survey now carrying on, our operations

are intimately connected with those of Mr Gardner, as very important advantageshave accrued to Government from the accuracy with which their plans have been

made. This has arisen from the union of the parties'. By this he meant the col-

laboration between themilitary surveyors

and the draftsmen of the civil branch.

Mudge's statement vindicates the introduction of Yeakell and Gardner to office

under the Board by the Duke of Richmond. The continuity of cartographic tradi?

tion in England is exemplified no less by these appointments, of men who had learnt

their trade in estate and county surveying, than by the affinity of their topographical

workmanship in private practice and in public service. By putting in harness to?

gether the civilian surveyor and the military engineer, the Duke created the national

survey of Great Britain, fitly known as the Ordnance Survey.

References

Original recordsBritish Museum, Map RoomSurveyors' drawings for the Trigonometrical Survey of England and Wales, 1791-1842.

Public Record Office: Board of Ordnance papersW.O. 30/54-60 (Invasion and defence; W.O. 30/54, 'General Roy's Papers'); W.O. 44/517(Corps of Military Surveyors and Draftsmen); W.O. 44/614 ('Precis ofthe Progress oftheOrdnance Survey . . . 1783-1834, by Ll Colonel Colby'); W.O. 46 (Out-letters of Master-General and Board); W.O. 47 (Minutes of Board); W.O. 54/197-236 (Establishments);W.O. 55/330-538 (Warrants); W.O. 78 (Maps and plans).


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THE ORIGINS OF THE ORDNANCE URVEY OF GREAT BRITAIN: APPENDIX 423

Royal SocietyMinute-books of Council, vols. 6-7 (1769-1810).

Somerset HouseWills of Thomas Yeakell (proved 23.vi.1787; P.C.C. Major 307) and William Gardner(proved 3.iv.i8oo; P.C.C. Adderley 275).

West Sussex Record Office, Chichester: Goodwood PapersHousehold Accounts; Letter-books; Maps and plans.

Windsor, Royal LibraryGeorgian MS 314 ('Considerations on the Propriety of making a General Military Map ofEngland . . .*, dated 24 May 1766). Printed in Fortescue, Sir J. (ed.), The Correspondenceof King George the Third, I (1927), 328-34.

Parish Registers of Boxgrove (Sx) and Westhampnett (Sx).

Printed worksClode, C. M. 1869 The Military Forces of the Crown.Close, Sir Charles 1926 The early years of the Ordnance Survey. Chatham.Gardiner, William 1737 Practical Surveying

Improved.Gardner, William, and Gream, Thomas 1791 Proposals for publishing a New Plan of theCounty of Sussex. Sussex Weekly Advertiser or Lewes Journal, 6 June 1791.

Gough, Richard 1780 British Topography.Macdonald, George 1917 General William Roy and his 'Military Antiquities of the Romans

in North Britain*. Archaeologia 68, 161-228.Mudge, William, et al. 1799 An Account of the Operations carried on for accomplishing a

Trigonometrical Survey of England and Wales. vol. I [1784-96]. W. Faden.Phillimore, R. H. 1945 Historical Records of the Survey of India. vol. I. Dehra Dun.Porter, R. W. 1889 History of the Corps of Royal Engineers. Chatham.Roy, William 1785 An Account of the Measurement of a Base on Hounslow-Heath. Phil.

Trans. 75, 385-480.-1787 An Account of the Mode proposed to be followed in determining the relative

situation of the Royal Observatories of Greenwich and Paris. Phil. Trans. 77, 188-226.-1790 An Account of the Trigonometrical Operation, whereby the distance between

the meridians of the Royal Observatories of Greenwich and Paris has been determined.Phil. Trans. 80, 111-270.

NoteThe documentation is not as complete as could be desired. There are important defici-

encies in the Ordnance records delivered by the War Office to the Public Record Office. Theinvaluable collection of papers assembled by General Colby, and including letters of Roy,Williams, Mudge and their successors and associates, is now known only in the extracts printedby Close in 1926; deposited with him by the Misses Colby, it cannot now be traced, and mustbe presumed to have perished by enemy action during the last war, with other records of

the Ordnance Survey. The only documents surviving from the first Trigonometrical Survey,apart from those in the Public Record Office and Goodwood Papers, are the surveyors* plansin the British Museum and one letter-book in the possession of the Ordnance Survey.

Nevertheless the materials for the history of English military survey, up to and in the eigh?teenth century, exist and await exploitation. For the opportunity to explore some of them, andfor facilities in doing so, I wish to thank the Leverhulme Trustees; Mr. Francis Steer, f.s.a.,County Archivist of West Sussex, and members of his staff; and successive Directors-General of the Ordnance Survey. The substance of this paper was read before the ChichesterBranch of the Historical Association in 1957 and at the International Geographical Congress,Stockholm, 1960.

Appendix

Printed below is the memorandum (undated and unpublished) written by GeneralRoy for the Duke of Richmond (see p. 420). It is set out so as to show Roy's revisionsto his original draft. Deletions are indicated by square brackets; additions, insertionsand substitutions are in italics,

The document is unpublished Crown copyright material in the Public RecordOffice and has been reproduced by permission of the Controller of H.M. StationeryOffice; its reference number is W.O. 30/54, art. 22.

[Memoranda submitted to His Grace the Duke of Richmond, by way of general


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424 THE ORIGINS OF THE ORDNANCE URVEY OF GREAT BRITAIN: APPENDIX

Instructions to the Engineers to be employed in surveying the Coast and Districts ofthe Country near it.]

General Instructions for the officers of Engineers employed in surveying.In every District to be surveyed, the first thing to be considered will be; What

situations are the best, for the Base or Bases to be measured, as the foundation of the

work, and for connecting the different Serieses of triangles together ?These Bases should therefore be as long as the circumstances of the ground will

permit; not less than a Mile, or a Mile and a half: and as often as possible, they shouldbe measured on the sand of the Sea Shore; because in such cases no Reduction of anykind will be necessary on account of difference of level.?

Every Base should be measured at least twice; and oftner if there should be anyremarkable disagreement between the first and second measurement.?For this pur?pose, one chain should be kept as a standard, with which those in common use will befrom time to time compared at least at the beginning and end of any operation, that atrue mean may be taken for the ultimate length. And with a view to still greateraccuracy it will be proper to observe the heat of the Air, as shown by the Thermo-meter at stated intervals, while the operation is going on.?

The principal Triangles, connected with the Base or Bases, will be such as are nearlyequilateral, formed by the Church Steeples, Windmils, single Trees, or other con-

spicuous objects and in each of these Triangles all the three Angles should be as oftenas possible actually observed with the large Theodelet, that the reduction to 1800 maybe properly made.

In many cases it will be advisable and even necessary, to establish signals by CampColours or otherwise on the chief eminences, whose situation being permanentlymarked on the ground, so as to be referred to occasionally, will form so many aux-

iliary triangles for connecting the Survey, where other remarkable Objects may bewanting.?

With regard to profil or elevation, the relative heights of the angles of the greattriangles, are such, as on all occasions should be first determined: Because these beingonce settled, the relative heights of all other chief commanding points of any generalRange running parallel to the shore, or to a River, such as an Army would occupy to

oppose the Descent of an Enemy on the coast, or his penetration into the country after

he had effected a Landing, will be subsequently ascertained with respect to the first;and the whole should refer to Low Water Mark at spring Tides, by some permanentMark, taken on a Quay or Wharff, or some other substantial Building situated near

the Shore, to which reference may be had on any future occasion.

In certain cases, the smaller heights near the shore will be best determined by theaccurate application of the Telescopic Spirit Level. But in general, the Business will

be greatly expedited, by taking the Angles of elevation or depression, with Ramsden's

best Theodelet, from some centrical point, whose distance from a number of others

has been already ascertained by trigonometrical computation, and from which point all

the others can be distinctly seen.?In levelling, if the Telescopic level be adjusted by inversion in its Ys at any intermedi?

ate point exactly half way between the two Station Staffs, the relative heights of the

vanes, or their distance from the centre of the Earth will be obtained at once, without

any allowance for curvature or Refraction. But by the Angles of elevation or depres?

sion, allowance, according to the distance, must be made for curvature and Refrac?

tion, at the same time, that great accuracy must be observed in adjustingthe Instru?

ment, and taking the Angles repeatedly, that a true mean may be obtained for the

ultimate Result.?One method of keeping the Books must be adhered to by all the Engineers, that any

one of them may be able to lay easily down the observations of the others. Perhapsfor common Surveying, the best kind of Book would be one of the quarto size, with

certain Columns ruled on the page towards the left hand to contain the Angles and

measured distances of the stations, commencing at the bottom of the page; while the


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THE ORIGINS OF THE ORDNANCE URVEY OF GREAT BRITAIN: APPENDIX 425

Right hand page, contained the corresponding Sketch or Eye Draught: or the moderecommended in the Appendix to these Instructions may be made use of and whichever

found best in practice will of course be adhered to.The

Commanding Engineeron the

spotwill

chargehimself with the determination

of the great triangles, and will register in a Book kept by himself every thing concern?ing them; as well as what may relate to the relative heights, whether determined by theLevel or by the vertical appartus [sic] of the Theodelet.

The filling in or surveying the interior part of the great triangles will [probably] beexecuted in the common manner by the Junior Engineers, with the small Theodeletsand chains provided for the purpose. They will [of course] consequently proceed[along] around the contours and Creeks of the shore; along the great Roads and lanes;and also along the courses of the Rivers, Rivulets, [and principal Drains or Water-gangs]. The Boundaries of Forests, Woods, Heaths, Commons or Morasses, are to bedistinctly surveyed, and in the enclosed parts of the Country all the hedges, and otherBoundaries of Fields are to be carefully laid down. althoy the exact Turn of every oneneed not be surveyed, if frequent Cuts in different directions are made throi the inclosuresand the direction of thefences laid down where they intersect these cuts, the remainder maygenerally be taken by the Eye.

The Risings or irregularities of the ground are every where to be expressed withcare; so as to render the plan truly topographical, by preserving that gradation orkeeping which should distinguish at first sight the higher part above those that arelower; and these last above such as are quite flat. To do this in the best manner, theplan of the Lines, or great features of the Country, should be first laid down ; whichbeing done, the particularities of the surface, will be more readily and truly repre?sented afterwards.?

The first survey will be made from the Magnetick Meridian; But in every districtit will be necessary by observation of the Sun or Stars to determine a true Meridian;by ascertaining the Angle that it makes with some one of the longest sides of thegreat triangles; whence the variation of the Compass will at the same time be deter?mined.

Each Field cannot be represented on less scale than two Inches to a mile; whichmay be that generally made use of for the [whole] general plan [of the Coast]. ParticularSea Ports of consequence, such as the Thames and the Medway &c, [would] willrequire a scale of about six Inches to a mile. [But] These may afterwards be reduced toa Scale of one Inch to a mile [seems to be sufficient for a whole County; and perhaps]for the Island in general, [half an Inch would suffice].?

A Book of general miscellaneous Remarks should also be kept, wherein may be

entered every thing that occurs relative to the nature of the Coast, such as, what partsof it are accessible, and what not; at what distance from the shore, ships of war maycome to an Anchor to cover a debarkation from Boats; and what sort of communi?cations there are leading from the Coast to the interior Country, in case an enemyhad made his landing good: also the nature of the soil, how far the clay, chalk, or Graveicountry Extends. Whether there is plenty of Timber and of what sort, and size. And as inevery chalk country the Rivulets generally run underground & the Inhabitants aresupplied by wells dug to a considerable depth; it will be proper to mention the depthsof such wells.

It would also be useful to endeavour to ascertain, what may be the numbers ofHorses, Black Cattle and Sheep, in each district, noting the seasons of the year when

they are in the Marshes or grazing lands near the Coast; and when not ?When the Engineers have made themselves thoroughly acquainted with any parti?cular district where they may be employed, they will be able to point out the Routesby which the Cattle should be driven back on the landing of an Enemy; and the placeof Rendesvous where they would be most secure.

The number of Carriages of different kinds in every district should be estimatednoting the distance of their Wheels, and the width of the Tracks in each Parish.

The Collectors of Taxes will be able to give information of the number of Waggons


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426 THE ORIGINS OF THE ORDNANCE URVEY OF GREAT BRITAIN: DISCUSSION

& carts in each Parish and the Clerks of the Militia Subdivision Meetings will be ableto say how many men are on the Lists for Balloting in each Parish.

DISCUSSION

Afternoon Meeting, 26 March 1962

Before the paper the Chairman (Professor H. C. Darby) said: This afternoon weare going to hear three papers, by three people whose names must be very familiar tothis audience. The three papers summarize the results of recent research and are

arranged in order of time and their common theme is the continuity of map-makingactivities in Britain from a very early date. The first paper is by Mr. Crone, theLibrarian and Map Curator of the Society. Mr. Crone will present evidence for a linkbetween late Roman maps and the earliest maps of Britain, and for work in the field,throughout the Middle Ages down to the sixteenth century. The second paper is byMiss Campbell, who is Lecturer in Geography at Birkbeck College, University of

London. She will deal with the early development of some of the symbols used onEnglish maps during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The third and last

paper is by Mr. Skelton who is in charge of the Map Room of the British Museum.Mr. Skelton will describe the results of his recent researches into the early history ofthe Ordnance Survey, emphasizing the part played in its early work by privatesurveyors.

Mr. Crone, Miss Campbell and Mr. Skelton read their papersThe Chairman : I think I see in the audience Mr. Parsons who is in charge of the

Map Collection at the Bodleian Library.Mr. E. J. S. Parsons : I should like to say how much I enjoyed the lectures this

eveningand I have

justtwo observations to make. The first, to Mr. Crone, is to ask if

he has any record of a sixteenth century manuscript map of Great Britain which wasadvertised for sale, and an illustration given, in Mercurius Britannicus, a publication of

Maggs Brothers, in 1939. The map, drawn on two quarto pages, was included in a

manuscript dealing with astrology and magic and was obviously based on the GoughMap: it is signed by Thomas Buttler. I only discovered this on Saturday last and Iwrote immediately to Messrs. Maggs and learned that the manuscript had been soldto Mr. Kraus of New York in 1946. I am writing to him tomorrow to find out moreinformation. Perhaps Mr. Crone would say whether he knows of this map or ofThomas Buttler.

The second comment is on the lecture about the Ordnance Survey and the partplayed by civil surveyors. These surveyors, indeed, played a great part in delineatingBritain before the establishment of the Ordnance Survey. As Mr. Skelton said, somebecame part of the Royal Corps of Surveyors and Draftsmen and were paid aretainer and so much per acre surveyed. But after the first years of the Ordnance

Survey, we find that Major Colby had no great opinion of them and this dissatisfactionled eventually to the establishment of the first military survey company when he took

charge of the Survey of Ireland. He said that the prejudice of the civil surveyorsagainst new methods and the impossibility of bringing them down to a military disci?

pline made the use of soldiers a much better proposition. The first Survey Company(the 13th of the Corps of the Royal Sappers and Miners) was formed in 1824 and thesecond (the 14th) in 1825. Both saw service in Ireland. In 1828 Sir Henry Hardingespoke of the services of the Corps on the survey before a Select Committee on Public

Income and Expenditure. He said that when a comparison was made between civilsurveyors working with military officers and 'sapper' surveyors working under their

officers, the pure military combination made the greater and more satisfactory pro?gress. Not only was it more accurate, but also very much cheaper. That, of course,carries the story a little further than Mr. Skelton took it this evening. But it does show

that, although the civil surveyors were responsible for much good work in the earlyyears of the Survey, after 1824 the military took over and carried out most of thef t k

landmark in british cartography

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