History of Road Maps

1675	John Ogilby Small Large Detail	The first true survey of the countries roads and issued as volume 1 of Britannia. Ogilby's sudden death terminated the follow-up volumes. The maps had scrolls, usually 7 per page, with an ornamental cartouche and were large. They were intended for reference purposes and not travelling companions.
1676	Ogilby and Morgan	The Traveller's Pocket Book. Did not contain maps.
1676	John Speed Small Large Detail 1 Detail 2 Detail 3	A panic measure on the part of publishers Basset and Chiswell as a reaction to Ogilby's atlas. Some, not all, of the 1676 atlases have 6 double page representations of the country's roads. They are more like graphical lists of town names than maps, but warrant a mention. The main county maps did not have roads added until 1713 (John Overton edition).
1719	Thomas Gardner Small Large	A reduced copy of Ogilby's maps published as A Pocket Guide to the English Traveller. Similar scroll layout, without the fancy cartouche.
1719	John Sennex Small Large Comparison with Kitchin	A reduced copy of Ogilby's maps. Similar layout, without the fancy cartouche. For Sennex's Actual Survey of all the Principal Roads of England and Wales. There are quite a few varieties of these maps over the next 50 years or so. First issue - 1719, re-issued 1742 by Mary Sennex. Issued by John Bowles is 1757 as The Roads through England and Wales with maps printed on both sides of the page - most other issues were single sided. Re-issued in 1767 by John Bowles as Kitchin's Post-Chaise Companion through England and Wales with several alterations, and a few new maps engraved by Thomas Kitchin. Last published in 1775 as The Roads of England & Wales and also as Jeffery's Itinerary - both by Sayer & Bennett.
1720 - 1764	Owen-Bowen Small Large	Produced for Britannia Depicta or Ogilby Improved. Untidy, functional strip maps. Heavily embellished with coats of arms and supplementary notes. Printed both sides of the page, sometimes with a county map or descriptive text.
c1750	Gentleman's Magazine Small Large	Various compilations of strip road maps.
1756	Various Islington Small Large Paddington Small Large	Proposed Roads. Until now roads pretty much evolved - this shows the planning of new roads to avoid urban congestion. These maps are the first examples of bypasses and both date from 1756.
1760 - 1770	Universal Magazine Small Large	Functional strip maps produced as inserts. These maps have several unrelated roads on the same sheet.
1767	Thomas Kitchin Small Large Comparison with Sennex	Re-issue of Sennex maps by John Bowles as Kitchin's Post-Chaise Companion through England and Wales with several alterations, and a few new maps engraved by Thomas Kitchin.
1771	Daniel Paterson	Many of Paterson's Roads do not contain maps, but are highly descriptive of the roads.
1776	Mostyn Armstrong Small Large	An Actual Survey of the Great Post Roads between London and Edinburgh.
1776 - 1778	Taylor and Skinner Scotland Small Scotland Large Ireland Small Ireland Large	These two surveyors produced two main works - one of Scotland the other of Ireland. Taylor and Skinner's Survey of the Roads of North Britain & Scotland published 1776 Also in 1776: A Survey of the Great Post Roads between London Bath and Bristol. Taylor and Skinner's Maps of the Roads of Ireland, Surveyed 1777 , published in 1777. Scottish maps re-issued by Thomas Brown in 1800
1782	Carington Bowles Small Large	Carington Bowles' Post-Chaise Companion. Very compact strip maps intended for the traveller.
1785 - 1807	Carington Bowles Smal l Large Different editions	Strip maps for Paterson's Itinerary. Published by Carington Bowles(1785) then as Bowles & Carver (1794 - 1807).
1790	John Cary Epping - Small Large Stratford- Small Large	These maps from Cary's Traveller's Companion have attributions of individual houses and their owners. Some buildings have line-of-sight direction indicators to the road.
1805 - 1820	Laurie & Whittle Small Large	Laurie & Whittle's New Traveller's Companion featured areas straddling different counties to show the coach and post routes between the towns. Roads are shown in a very linear fashion with great accuracy in distance markings and roadside inns. Many issues with updates and supplementary notes.
1814 - 1817	Edward Mogg Dartford - Small Large Dover - Small Large	Finely engraved maps, similar in style to Cary's 1790 maps, for A Survey of the High Roads of England and Wales ..... The coverage is not nationwide, only involving a dozen or so southern counties.
c1818	John Thomson Small Large	Some Scottish roads
1826	Charles Smith Small Large	Smith's Pocket Companion of the Roads of England and Wales contained small, functional strip maps.



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	The first printed maps of British roads are attributed to John Ogilby in 1675. Until then roads didn't figure too highly as a cartographic feature. Maps were produced for large, expensive volumes to grace the library shelves of the rich and famous. It was of prime importance to show country estates, coats of arms and territorial divisions. It wasn't until the Civil War in the 1640s that this oversight was spotted, and that maps needed to reflect the practicalities of transportation. John Ogilby was commissioned to survey the major post roads and planned a 3 volume set of maps. The first volume, published in 1675, contained 100 maps in the style of scrolling parchment. Later that year Ogilby died, and with him, the remaining two volumes. Ogilby's maps were accurate, with each strip of the scroll containing its own compass indicator and distances marked at the mile and eighth of a mile (furlong). There were several variations of the mile at that time - the 'statute' at 1760 yards, the 'British' at 2428 yards, and several others. Ogilby adopted the statute as used in an around London. All the practical landmarks were included: rivers, bridges, cross roads, gallows, gibbets, milestones, etc. The road was marked as a solid line if bounded by a hedge and dotted if open to field or moor. The style, format and data were copied by Gardner and Sennex in their road maps, the main variation being the size of the publications. Ogilby maps were large, expensive and unsuitable for the modern traveller. A more portable version was required for the 18th century man of the road. In the 1720s there was a need for cheap and cheerful road maps that were produced down to a price and a size. It was not necessary to have the fancy embellishments, so scrolls made way to simple strips. As more travellers used the maps, publishers responded to feedback and made amendments and corrections as necessary. Rivalry was fierce and so was piracy of data. Everyone claimed to be carrying out new surveys. Some, like Ogilby, Cary, Taylor and Skinner did conduct full surveys, others partial surveys, but many relied on data fed back to them as complaints or recommendations for improvement. The latter is a more credible. The Owen-Bowen maps from 1720 - 1764 show the same features as displayed in Ogilby's work of 1675, so it is not unreasonable to suspect a degree of negative feedback from the travelling public. An interesting feature of some maps is the terminology of 'Measured Miles' and 'Computed Miles' - a cynic might suggest that an unmeasured distance was subjected to an educated guess. One feature that is missing from most of the 18th century maps is the toll gate or turnpike. The poor state of the country's roads in the 1620s created heated debate over the cost and responsibility for maintenance. It was not until 1663 that the first toll gate was erected in Cambridgeshire, and many more followed. By the mid 1700s the escalation of turnpike roads was rapid, and they all over the country, on all major roads. The inclusion of the toll gate or turnpike on maps was only taken up in the 1790s as a noteworthy feature. Cary's maps have information regarding the purchase and and display of turnpike tickets. Similarly, inns and roadside 'halfway' houses did not feature on too many early road maps. This omission may have been corrected as a reaction to feedback and the demand of the public for this type of data. An alternative theory is that of sponsorship: the Mogg map of Dover makes specific mention of the Royal Hotel, The Ship and the York Hotel. Cary has block inserts for selected inns on his described roads. The majority of road maps between Ogilby and c1800 were based on the old post roads detailed by Ogilby with no consideration for the thousands of other roads that criss-crossed the country. Had Ogilby finished his remaining two volumes there may have been a greater understanding of the minor roads. As an example, the old London to Rye road was shown as a direct route. In practice the road is a direct route from London to Hastings, with a right-angle turning at Flimwell that then leads to Rye. Hastings has always been a major fishing town supplying fish to Tonbridge, Sevenoaks, Bromley and London for centuries. The Hastings road would have been well established and very busy even in Ogilby's days, but Rye was a port and as such probably conveyed mail to foreign lands. Ogilby's selection of roads gave a misleading impression of the existence and importance of other routes, and the mapmakers that followed in the next 150 years did nothing to improve matters. The most enlightening contribution to the 'lost' routes came from Laurie and Whittle in 1806 - they show Hastings as the primary route with the Rye road as a secondary route. They broke from the tradition of strip maps to show how the roads were inter-connected, the distances between junctions, along with wayside inns and toll gates. The maps discussed here were printed uncoloured, but were sometimes hand coloured. The convention for colouring roads in yellow, towns and buildings in red, etc is very old and has followed down to fairly modern times. The modern classification of roads has given way to 3 or 4 colours for indicating the grade of carriageway.