This page has paths:

1. 1 2018-05-15T18:32:48+00:00 Craig Dietrich 2d66800a3e5a1eaee3a9ca2f91f391c8a6893490 Volume 1, Plates 27 — 49 Crystal B. Lake 3 plain 2018-08-29T17:52:21+00:00 Crystal B. Lake b7829cc6981c2837dafd356811d9393ab4d81adc

This page is referenced by:

• 1 2018-08-28T17:23:57+00:00 Plate 1.47: Plan of the Roman Roads in Yorkshire 30 Scholarly Commentary with DZI View for Vetusta Monumenta, Plate 1.47. Commentary by Pete Wilson. 2023-08-04T22:23:10+00:00 1737 [George Vertue] after Francis Drake 53.9585761, -1.1506314 53.9635455, -1.0848728 [Drake's research] 53.9585761, -1.1506314 11/01/1735-12/31/1736 Digitized, courtesy of the University of Missouri-Columbia. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. [Vertue, George] historical maps roads Romano-British Antiquities-Roman (Fenn Index 1.2) Drake, Francis Warburton, John Lord Burlington Plate: Map of Yorkshire and immediately adjacent areas originally produced by Francis Drake (1696-1771) and possibly engraved by George Vertue (1684-1756) as suggested by John Fenn (1784, 19).
  
  Object:  A map of most of the historic County of Yorkshire (as defined prior to the 1972 local government reorganization), although parts of the southern West Riding around Sheffield and the north-western extension of the North Riding west of Barnard Castle (County Durham) are missing. The latter area is occupied by a geographically inaccurate inset map derived from a manuscript version of the late Roman military and governmental list known as the Notitia Dignitatum. A number of areas outside the boundaries of the County are also included, including a substantial part of northern Lincolnshire.
  
  The same plate was published by Francis Drake (1696-1771) in his Eboracum: Or the History and Antiquities of the City of York (1736, following page 36). However, the motivation for the initial production of Plate 1.47 is somewhat unclear; the version in Eboracum, while lacking the annotation in the upper right-hand corner that appears on the Vetusta Monumenta plate, bears the same dedication to the Society of Antiquaries of London. However, Drake’s Eboracum also acknowledges the support of the City of York and 540 subscribers. Unlike the Vetusta Monumenta version, the map as it appears in Eboracum is hand-tinted in color.
  
  Transcription:
  
  Click here to access an interactive map providing full transcription and translation details for Plate 1.47.
  
  To the Society of ANTIQUARIES in LONDON this Plate of the ROMAN Roads in the County of YORK &c is particularly inscribed by their Brother and very humble Servant FRANCIS DRAKE.
  
  Commentary by Pete Wilson:
  The Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) Minute Book for 27 November 1735 records that Francis Drake (1696-1771) "brought an Engraven Map of the Roman Roads in Yorkshire . . . which . . . [he] intends to dedicate to the Society" (SAL Minutes II.120). The minutes of the 25 March 1736 meeting record that:

  [t]he Secretary read a letter from Mr Drake, desiring The Society would be pleased to accept the Dedication of this map of the Roman Roads and Stations in Yorkshire. One of which he presented to them;…it was ordered that the Society, do make a present to Mr Drake of York of the expenses of the plate of his said Map,…[and] that Mr Drake be desired to deposit the said plate with the Society, after [he] has cast off a sufficient number for his own book. (SAL Minutes II.169)

  The balance of the evidence suggests that Drake produced the map and had it engraved at his own expense, but was reimbursed by the Antiquaries who published it in Vetusta Monumenta. Consequently, it is not possible to be certain who engraved the plate, which is unsigned, although Drake would have known George Vertue, the Society’s engraver, having been elected a Fellow on 27 February 1735.
  
  Antiquarians, such as William Camden (1551-1623), have been interested in Roman Britain from at least the sixteenth century and have recorded and commented on Roman roads; although the earliest surviving reference to Roman roads in Yorkshire can be traced back to Ranulph Higden in 1344 (Babington 1889, 46). The first known attempt to map the Roman roads of Yorkshire was by John Warburton (1682-1759) as part of his Map of The County of York (1720), and it is likely that Drake borrowed from Warburton’s map but added his own information, such as his tracing of the road from Stamford Bridge to York (Drake 1736, 33-34). While presented as a map of Roman roads, the plate provides much additional information about Roman Yorkshire as understood at the time of its publication, although subsequent research has shown much of Drake’s understanding to be incorrect. Rather than assessing the map in cartographic terms, this consideration focuses on its value as a resource for understanding the Roman roads of Yorkshire and the development of antiquarian and archaeological understanding of them and associated sites.
  
  Features of roads on the map include: indications of the certainty of the roads’ existence, graded from certain (two unbroken lines) to less certain (combinations of lengths of unbroken lines and dotted lines) and uncertain or speculative (two parallel dotted lines); distances between some locations in units of mille passus (M.P.), that is 5,000 Roman feet or a Roman mile (1,480 meters or 4,856 feet); and unremittingly straight courses for most of the roads. Rivers are included and named, along with contemporary towns and smaller settlements which lie off the road system as shown, for example Richmond in the north west and Frydaythorp (contemporary Fridaythorpe) in the east. The influence of Drake and other antiquarians’ mapping of the roads carries through into later work, including that of Thomas Codrington (1905) and that of the doyen of twentieth-century Roman roads research, Ivan Margary, who established the accepted number systems for Roman roads in Britain (Margary 1955-57; 1967; 1973). The basic network of Roman roads illustrated is still recognizable in modern presentations of the system with significant groups of roads converging on key locations such as York, Malton and Aldborough (Margary 1973, map 17; Ordnance Survey 2016).
  
  Major roads which are recorded on lines coincident, or very close to those accepted today, include that from Lincoln to the River Humber (Margary 1973, road 2d) and that from Isurium/Aldburgh (contemporary Aldborough) to Cataractonium/Catterick and on to Pierce Bridge (contemporary Piercebridge) and beyond (Margary 1973, roads 8b/8c). Roman-period names for the roads on Drake’s map are unknown. He labels the road north of Catterick ITER ad VALLUM, which means “Road to the Wall,” and refers to Hadrian’s Wall. The same road is also known to many antiquarians, such as Codrington (1905, 195-206) and MacLauchlan (1852), as Watling Street—one of several Watling Streets in Britain, with the best-known modern usage of the name being for the road from Dover to Whitchurch and Wroxeter (Margary 1973, road 1a-h). Codrington’s Watling Street, however, forms an extension of the Roman road he calls “Erming Street” (contemporary Ermine Street), which extends from London to Lincoln and on to York and Catterick. Codrington’s Erming Street incorporates two roads on Drake’s map: Iter A LINDO, approaching Danum/Doncaster from Lincoln, and ad EBOR from Castleford to LONGUS VICUS/Langburgh (contemporary Newton Kyme) and Tadcaster (Margary 1973, roads 28a-c). Drake’s road from York to Catterick through Aldborough is unnamed, but in contemporary usage is called Dere Street, and runs from York to Cramond in Scotland (Margary 1973, roads 8a-g). The name Dere Street derives from early medieval sources as the road to/from the Kingdom of Deira, which occupied eastern Yorkshire between the rivers Tees and Humber into the seventh century AD; afterwards, it became the southern part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria. In the twelfth-century History of St Cuthbert the road appears as Deorestrete (Bishop 2014, 39).
  
  Research on Roman roads in Britain was unfashionable during the later decades of the twentieth century; other than when they were impacted by modern development, Roman roads were largely ignored by professional and university-based archaeologists. However, some of Drake’s “less certain” roads—such as his ITER a DEVA from Langburgh (Newton Kyme)/Tadcaster to Chester (Margary 1973, road 712)—have been the subjects of considerable research in recent years, particularly by the Huddersfield and District Archaeological Society (Lunn et al. 2008). This work makes it clear that Drake’s arrow-straight route is largely speculative. As might be expected, the Roman-period road builders— while often utilizing short stretches of straight alignments—took account of the challenging topography of the Pennines in identifying a viable route. Drake’s Strat a DEVA ad ISURIUM et VALLUM (Chester to Aldborough) is similarly straight, but while its route south of Ilkley is still incompletely known, it is clear that this route, too, would have wandered far from Drake’s line. For both roads it is instructive to compare Drake’s plate with contemporary data, such as the latter map on this page: the product of a recent initiative, namely, the formation of the Roman Roads Research Association (RRRA). The RRRA brings together researchers, still a largely avocational group, with a view of developing a better understanding of the Roman roads of Britain as a whole.
  
  
  Drake’s “Certain Roads"
  
  Drake includes Ribchester on his map, despite the fact that it lies outside Yorkshire, and marks the site as a point of origin for two roads. The western road, Strata ad Vallum (Road to the Wall), extends to the northern edge of the map in another indicative, arrow-straight line. In reality, the road deviates to the east to negotiate a route through the uplands of the Forest of Bowland; to the north of Burrow in Lonsdale, the road stays on the east side of the River Lune in order to take advantage of the Tebay Gap to pass between the uplands of the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District (Margary 1973, road 7c).
  
  It is clear from examples such as these that Drake was not trying to offer anything approaching accurate mapping of the roads he illustrated. Instead, his map offers an indication of the roads’ broad directions. On the western side of the map, Drake’s Strata ad Vallum deviates away to the east from what appears be the River Lune as it extends north, whereas in reality the two get closer together, although they never quite converge. Similarly, his representation of his road ad LUGUVALLUM from Scotch Corner (unnamed on the map) to Carlisle (located off the map to the northwest) would meet his Strata ad Vallum at roughly the correct latitude in relation to the Tees Estuary on the eastern side of the county, although it incorporates a change of alignment on Gatherly (contemporary Gatherley) Moor and appears to be projected on a straight line west of there, taking no account of the topographical challenges presented by Stainmore and the upper Eden Valley.
  
  Drake’s attention to topography and geography in Yorkshire is scant. Perhaps Drake was constrained by the limitations on the period’s surveyors, although logarithmic tables and portable angle-measuring instruments had been available from the first half of the seventeenth century. His road from Malton to Burlington (Bridlington) passes through Sledmere and close to Wharram-le-Street, with Sledmere, incorrectly, located to the north of the latitude of Wharram-le-Street. Contemporary scholarship has a road extending eastwards from Malton towards Bridlington (Margary 1973, road 812), but with the course being traced for no more than six kilometers. That said, recent reconsideration of the previously unlocated Praetorio of Iter I of the Antonine Itinerary, a Roman-period road book, suggests that the name should be applied to a lost Roman-period port in the vicinity of Bridlington (Wilson 2017a). This would suggest that there should be a road from the preceding place in the Itinerary which is argued to be Malton (see below). The name of Wharram-le-Street suggests a location on a Roman road (Cameron 1977, 194-203; Gelling 1978, 153), but the road in question is more likely to be a possible north-south road extending southeast from Malton (Margary 1973, road 813), and not the west-east road to Bridlington. Drake’s road from Malton to Brough, which he regards as uncertain north of Londesburgh (contemporary Londesborough), is now seen as doubtful for the bulk of its length. The accepted route of road Margary 29 is to the east of Londesborough and, to the north of South Newbald, the route of Margary road 2e is to the west. The Londesborough area, as currently known, has not produced any evidence of substantial Roman-period settlement.
  
  
  Drake and Lord Burlington
  
  In the list of subscribers to his Eboracum, Drake gives particular prominence to Lord Burlington, who had intervened on his behalf after he was unjustly imprisoned for debt (Barr 2004). Lord Burlington had his seat at Londesborough as Baron Clifford, and it is possible that Drake’s placing of a major crossroads was an attempt to flatter his savior; the map shows Drake’s Brough to Malton road intersecting with his Stamford Bridge to Spurn Point Roman road at Londesborough. The same is presumably true with regard to Drake’s replacement of the modern name Bridlington with Burlington given that the development of the Domesday version of the place-name, Bretlinton, is readily philologically traced to Bridlington; there’s no evidence of a Burlington variation (Smith 1937, 100-02).
  
  
  Drake’s “Uncertain” or “Speculative” Roads
  
  As noted above, some of Drake’s “less certain” roads have been investigated by researchers in the twentieth century and also more recently. Modern scholarship has confirmed the existence of Drake’s road from York to Stamford Bridge as the western end of Margary (1973) road 810 (Haken 2018a). Drake’s York to Malton road has been accepted as “possible” (Haken 2018b); the best evidence for the road’s existence is to be found between York and Stockton-on-the-Forest (Margary 1973, road 800). In contrast, the road that Drake projects from York to the Tees Estuary—which runs through Newburgh and climbs over the Hambleton Hills and the western side of the North York Moors, where it could incorporate the Hambleton Street drove road as a possible element—finds no support in modern scholarship. In functional terms, the road, as suggested by Drake, would have been rendered superfluous by the existence of Cade’s Road (Margary 1973, road 80a), located to the west of the North York Moors on much less challenging terrain.
  
  Hambleton Street itself illustrates a difficult issue faced by Drake and other scholars interested in Roman roads: When is a routeway a Roman road? The Hambleton Street has long been assigned a prehistoric origin (Elgee 1930, 162). It has also been dated to the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods, as well as to the thirteenth century AD (Spratt 1982, 49-51). Hambleton Street displays no evidence of metaling nor of any other manifestations of Roman-period engineering and fits readily into the corpus of medieval and later drove roads known in Britain (Taylor 1979, 163-68). Hambleton Street’s medieval origins, however, have also been challenged (Hayes 1988, 48). The uncertainty about its origin serves to emphasize an aspect of Drake’s selection of roads. Although some are at best speculative, he sought to locate the major engineered roads, sometimes called “military” or “official” roads. Drake’s map therefore emphasizes roads built by or at the behest of the state to aid the processes of conquest, consolidation and government, rather than those built by local government (the coloniae or civitates), other smaller communities, or individuals, and certainly not the mass of trackways that linked smaller communities and farms (Frere 1974, 96, 125; Jones and Mattingly 1990, 175-77).
  
  Amongst Drake’s other less certain roads, it is now reasonably certain that there was a Roman road along the southern side of the Vale of Pickering, Drake’s road from Malton to Spital, perhaps with the Filey area as its ultimate destination (Margary 1973, road 816). There is evidence for it at the Malton end, within the civil settlement on the Norton side of the river Derwent; its route further east is unknown, but as the case is with many Roman roads in Britain, it may underlie a modern major road: in this case, the A64. Almost entirely speculative is Drake’s road paralleling the coast from Spurn Head, through Sweby (contemporary Sewerby), Spital, and Dunsley to the Tees Estuary. That said, the road he marks to Scardeburgh (contemporary Scarborough) can perhaps be seen as a “possible” road, not as a spur off a road roughly paralleling the coast, but more probably a spur off Margary (Margary 1973) road 816—the road that might underlie A64 today. A north-west to south-east road was found in 2009, south of Seamer village and north of Spital Corner, on a line that could connect the A64 and road Margary 817 (Margary 1973), from where there could be a link through to Scarborough, a site known to have been occupied in Roman times (Kitson Clark 1935, 125-27; Pettersen et al 2012, 127-32, 151-52; Wilson 2017b, 342-43).
  
  
  Developments Since Drake
  
  Drake’s “uncertain” road from Londesborough to Spurn Point, the most southerly point on the Yorkshire coast, finds no support in modern scholarship for the northern quarter of its length. However, the RRRA record the southern two-thirds, where Drake marks some sections with one solid and one broken line, as “possible,” based on suggestions made in earlier literature concerning a road from Brough to Spurn Head. Similarly, perhaps based solely on the evidence of Drake’s map, the RRRA also marks his “uncertain” road from York to Aldborough as “possible.”
  
  Drake has an “uncertain” road running from Stamford Bridge to Catterick via Easingwold, Thornton-le-Street and Romanby, which he almost certainly derived from observations by John Warburton and Roger Gale (Lukis 1887, 80-82; Warburton 1720). Margary (1973, map 17) and the Ordnance Survey (2016) deviate northwards from Drake’s route south of Easingwold, with the latter marking the route to a point north of Easingwold as “Road (possible).” However, the RRRA states categorically that there is no evidence for a Roman road in this area (Haken 2018c). It is likely that the name “Thornton-le-Street,” along with a length of road known as “The Street” located to the south of Thirsk, misled not only Drake but also later antiquarians and Margary, encouraging them to assume they must indicate the route of a Roman road. Further north, the name Romanby seems to have similarly misled Drake. Its origins lie in the Old Norse Hrómundr, meaning “Romund’s farm,” which became Romanby by A.D. 1398 and has nothing to do with Romans (Smith 1928, 210). However, modern scholarship has accepted the possibility of a road, known as Cade’s Road, on the east side of the Vales of York and Mowbray leading to a crossing of the Tees south of Darlington (Margary 1973, road 80a). Additionally, recent fieldwork has suggested that there may have been a previously unidentified road, or possibly roads, crossing the Vale of Mowbray to link Cade’s Road to Scotch Corner and/or Catterick (Fell 2017).
  
  One “certain” road marked by Drake runs directly from Malton across the North York Moors towards the coast somewhere between Whitby and Dunsley, with the route taking in the complex of Roman military earthworks at Cawthorn Camps (Wilson 2002). The latter are called Castrum on Drake’s map, an otherwise unknown Latin name. Considerable research was undertaken on the possible road line before and during the twentieth century, which suggested a proposed southern terminus at Amotherby to the west of Malton, rather than at Malton itself (Kitson Clark 1935, 39-40, 134-35; Hayes and Rutter 1964). Recent excavations have demonstrated that Wade’s Causeway, as it is known, is neither Roman nor a road. Instead, it’s probably a boundary feature, late Bronze Age or Iron Age in date (Vyner 2013; Vyner, in preparation).
  
  
  “Roman Period” Place Names
  
  Drake assigns Latin names to many of the places he marks on his map. Some of these are well known and accepted by modern scholarship; examples include Eboracum (York), Cataractonium (Catterick), and Danum (Doncaster). Some of his names are otherwise unknown, such as Castrum for Cawthorn Camps, and probably represent antiquarian invention. Other names are now known to be wrongly applied. The most obvious of these is Delgovitia (a variant spelling of Delgovicia) which Drake applies to Londesborough, presumably in a further attempt to flatter Lord Burlington. That said, he correctly identifies Stamford Bridge as Derventio, the place that precedes Delgovicia in Iter I of the Roman route list known as the Antonine Itinerary (Rivet 1970, 40-41). This identification was lost to modern scholarship for much of the twentieth century; Rivet and Smith, for example, place Derventio at Malton (Rivet and Smith 1979, 333-34). Recent work has rehabilitated Stamford Bridge as Derventio and persuasively argued Delgovicia to be Malton (Creighton 1988).
  
  Modern scholarship has also developed a better understanding of many of the other Latin place-names offered by Drake. He suggests Ribchester, in the west, to be Coccium recorded in Iter 10 of the Antonine Itinerary, a name now associated with Wigan but which was not known to be a substantial Roman-period settlement in Drake’s time. Meanwhile, Ribchester is now known to be Bremetenacum Veteranorum (Rivet and Smith 1979, 277). Similarly, Drake places Legoloium at Pontefract/Tanshelf, the latter name being a medieval name for part of the area, whereas Lagentium, the form of the Latin name now accepted, is today associated with Castleford (Rivet and Smith 1979, 383). Drake assigns the name Cambodumum [Cambodunum] to Almondbury, a major Iron Age hill fort with no evidence of Roman-period occupation. Almondbury is some 4.5 miles southeast of Slack Roman fort and vicus (village). This has also been suggested to be Cambodunum, although recent research suggests the name belongs to the fort and vicus at Adel (Wilson 2016). Drake marks Addle (Adel) on a possible road running south of the river Wharfe from Ilkley to a junction with his ITER a DEVA and Strat ROM. a Derby ad EBOR at Aberford: a location where Roman material has been found, but which has not been recognized as a Roman road junction (Margary 1973, 415; Ordnance Survey 2016). Drake assigns Adel the name Adelocum, which is unknown from Latin sources but was adopted by other antiquarians such as Ralph Thoresby (Hunter 1830, 377); Adelocum should now be dismissed in favor of Cambodunum (see above).
  
  Drake assigns Calcaria to Tadcaster, an identification accepted by modern scholarship, despite evidence of Roman-period occupation being largely limited to casual finds of coins and other objects with few recorded Roman-period structures (Rivet and Smith 1979, 288-89). Drake assigned Ptolemy’s name, Olicana, to Ilkley. This identification stood for a long time, but Rivet and Smith propose Verbeia, suggesting Olicana should be associated with the fort at Elslack, a site not recorded by Drake and located to the west of Skipton (Rivet and Smith 1979, 430-31, 493).
  
  As noted above, Castrum, which Drake applies to Cawthorn Camps, is an otherwise unknown Latin name, as is Castrum Barf located further south on the same road and presumably associated by Drake with the village of Great Barugh. The Barugh element derives from the Old English beorg/berg meaning hill. Both Castrum and Castrum Barf are likely to be Drake’s creations as could be LONGUS VICUS, which he applies to Langburgh/Newton Kyme. Longus Vicus also appears on the inset map taken from the Notitia Dignitatum and, in the form Longovicium, has been suggested as the name for Lanchester, another fort in County Durham. However, Langburgh—meaning long hill or long fortification (Ekwall 1960, 74-75, 286 for the elements)—appears to be an accepted local name for the Newton Kyme site, as Gibson, in his 1695 edition of Camden’s Britannia, relates of the “many coyns dug up” there that “the inhabitants call them Langborrow-pennies” (Gibson 1695, 732).
  
  In line with antiquarian understanding of the time, Drake labels the northern two-thirds of his map MAXIMA CAESARIENSIS and assigns the area of Lincolnshire on his map to the Diocletianic province of BRITANNIAE SECUNDAE PARS. E. Böcking makes the same identification a century later (Böcking 1839, 2.74). The provinces of Maxima Caesariensis and Britannia Secunda were created when the Emperor Diocletian (A.D. 284-305) made Britannia a Diocese sub-divided into four provinces. Modern scholarship favors placing Britannia Secunda north of the river Humber with its capital at York, with Flavia Caesariensis, based on Lincoln, to the south of the river (Jones and Mattingly 1990, map 5:7). However, Rivet and Smith, following Mann and Hassell, allow for the possibility that the province of Flavia Caesariensis was based on York and Britannia Secunda on Lincoln (Rivet and Smith 1979, 46; Mann 196l; Hassell 1976). Despite that uncertainty, modern scholarship is united in placing Maxima Caesariensis in the southeast of England based on London.
  
  Most of the places recorded in the inset from the Notitia Dignitatum came under the military command of the Dux Britanniarum and are believed by today’s scholars to have belonged to the province of Britannia Secunda, where their locations have been identified (Böcking 1839, 2.112). However, the locations of the Diocletianic provincial boundaries are not known with any certainty, and Danum (Doncaster) must have been located very close to the boundary with Flavia Caesariensis if it was in Britannia Secunda. Danum is in Yorkshire, as are Sexta (the Notitia’s name for York as the base for Legio VI Victrix) and Praesidium—if the later name equates with Praetorio identified with Bridlington. However, several of the places on the Notitia map are not in Yorkshire, according both to modern scholarship and also earlier researchers. These include a number of places located in what is, or was until local government reorganization in 1972, County Durham: Arbeia (South Shields), Concangios (also spelled Concangis – Chester-le-Street), and Lavatres (also spelled Lavatris – Bowes), and perhaps also Longus Vicus, if it is Lanchester (see above). Morbium may be Piercebridge located on the River Tees, which separates Yorkshire and County Durham. Verteris (Brough under Stainmore) and Maglova (also spelled Maglona – Old Carlisle) are in Cumbria. Derventio, from the inset map, need not necessarily relate to the Yorkshire site of that name, as Littlechester, Derby and Papcastle, Cumbria (Rivet and Smith 1979, 334) share the Latin name with Stamford Bridge. Additionally, earlier researchers thought that the name could belong to Ebchester in County Durham (see, for example: Longstaffe 1780, 289). Ebchester, however, is now believed to be Vindomora (Rivet and Smith 1979, 502-03). Dictis, Barboniacum and Magis from the inset are unlocated, although the last may be Burrow Walls, Cumbria (Rivet and Smith 1979, 406-07).
  
  
  Cartographic, Geographic, and Historical Idiosyncrasies and Uncertainties
  
  Drake labels the lowlands of the River Ouse and its tributaries VALLIS MAGNA EBORACI, or Great Vale of York: a name usually applied to the southern part alone. The northern part of this area has been known, since the medieval period, as the Vale of Mowbray—so named for the family of Robert de Mowbray who was granted the area after the Norman conquest of A.D. 1066. The name “Parisi” appears twice on Drake’s map, located, seemingly randomly, on the Wolds that occupy the south-eastern part of Yorkshire. While the locations chosen are “correct” in that they lie in that part of the County believed to be within the civitas (local governmental unit) of the Parisi (Halkon 2013, 133), Drake does not similarly assign the rest of Yorkshire to any named group. Both contemporary and eighteenth-century scholarship, however, place it within the civitas of the Brigantes (Hartley and Fitts 1988, 1-2).
  
  Brough, otherwise known as Brough-on-Humber, is believed to be the Petuaria of Ptolemy’s Geography and the Ravenna Cosmography (as Decuaria), an identification supported by the discovery of an inscription (Collingwood and Wright 1965, number 717). Drake randomly places Petuaria in the middle of the Yorkshire Wolds without any symbol that might suggest the presence of a settlement or town. Similarly, he places Praetorium, Praetorio of the Antonine Itinerary, on Spurn Head, again without any form of symbol; as noted above, however, it is now believed to have been located close to Bridlington (Burlington on Drake’s map).
  
  Drake calls Bridlington (his Burlington) Bay GABRANTUICORUM SINUS PORTUOSUS vel SALVTARIS, which means ‘‘bay of the Gabrantovices suitable for a harbour” (Rivet and Smith 1979, 364). The tribal name Gabrantovices, thought to belong to a sub-tribe or sept of the Brigantes, suggests that the name should relate to a location further north than Bridlington and, probably, Filey, both of which are believed to be within the Parisian rather than the Brigantian civitas. However, it should be noted that the location of the boundary between the two civitates is uncertain (Wilson 2009, 109). Rivet and Smith associate the name Dunum Sinus with the estuary of the river Tees, which Drake marks as Ostium flu Teife (Rivet and Smith 1979, 344-45). This name is otherwise unknown in Latin and is, presumably, Drake’s translation of Teesmouth. Drake assigns Dunus Sinus to Whitby harbour—one of the few safe anchorages between Bridlington and the estuary of the river Tees—probably because of the proximity of the village of Dunsley. However, Dunsley is derived from the Old English Dunesla, meaning Dun’s forest clearing, and is therefore unrelated to Ptolemy’s Dunus Sinus. If Rivet and Smith’s identification of Dunus Sinus at the Tees Estuary is correct, there are several possible locations for Gabrantuicorum Sinus Portuosus vel Salvtaris; the north and south bays at Scarborough, both of which are relatively open, or more probably the estuary of the River Esk at Whitby, which provides a sheltered natural harbour on an otherwise largely inhospitable coast. Further south, Drake calls Spurn Point OCELLUM PROMONTORIUM, which Rivet and Smith accept as a possibility, but they prefer Flamborough Head located 35 miles to the north (Rivet and Smith 1979, 429).
  
  Drake has the sea randomly populated with ships and smaller craft that in some cases could be suggested to bear some resemblance to vessels of the medieval period. However, some ‘Roman’ characteristics can be identified – the galleys in the Humber Estuary (ABUS AESTVARIUM) close to PRAETORIUM and north of Whitby, both appears to carry rams and the ship positioned east of Filey Bay, bears some resemblance to a Roman period merchantman. These details suggest a knowledge of Roman ships, possibly drawn from images on sculpture, on the part of Drake, or perhaps Vertue.
  
  
  Conclusions
  
  While it is clear that our knowledge of Roman Yorkshire has improved immensely since Drake’s day, it is also apparent that he and his contemporaries had a level of understanding of the major Roman roads and contemporary settlements that all subsequent workers have benefited from. Indeed, insights such as the attribution of the correct Latin name to Malton/Norton suggest that Drake’s work and that of his contemporaries may repay revisiting by present-day scholars wishing to take their subject forward.
  
  Similarly, it is worth recognizing other potential data offered by antiquarian records. Drake’s map provides insights into the development of place names in the nearly three hundred years since its publication. This is demonstrated by Scardeburgh, Drake’s spelling of Scarborough, which provides concrete evidence for the generally accepted view that the standardization of spellings was, in part at least, a product of the Ordnance Survey’s mapping of the country in the mid- to late- nineteenth century, and that modern “accepted” spellings may reflect mis-hearings of dialect pronunciations by their Surveyors.
  
  Works Cited:
  
  Babington, Churchill. 1889. Polychronicon, Ranulphi Higden Monachii Cistrensis, Together with the English Translation of John Trevisa and an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century. Vol II. London: Longman.
  
  Barr, C. Bernard L. “Drake, Francis bap. 1696, d. 1771.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  
  Bishop, Mike. 2014. The Secret History of the Roman Roads of Britain. Barnsley: Pen and Sword.
  
  Böcking, E. 1839. Notitia Dignitatum et Administrationum Omnium tam Civilium quam Militarium in partibus Orientis etc Occidentis. Bonnae: A Marci.
  
  Cameron, Kenneth. 1977. English Place-Names. Third edition. London: Batsford.
  
  Codrington, Thomas. 1905. Roman Roads in Britain. Second edition. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
  
  Collingwood, Robin George and Richard Pearson Wright. 1965. The Roman Inscriptions of Britain. Volume I. Inscriptions on Stone. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  
  Creighton, John. 1988. “The Place Names of East Yorkshire in the Roman Period.” In Recent Research in Roman Yorkshire, edited by J. Price and P.R. Wilson, 387-406. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
  
  Drake, Francis. 1736. Eboracum: or the History and Antiquities of the City of York. London: William Bowyer.
  
  Ekwall, Eilert. 1960. The Concise Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  
  Elgee, Frank. 1930. Early Man in North-East Yorkshire. Gloucester: Bellows.
  
  Fell, David. 2017. “Scotch Corner. A Crossroads on the Roman Frontier.” British Archaeology 154: 14-21.
  
  Fenn, John. 1784. Three Chronological tables, Exhibiting a state of the Society of Antiquaries of London, from its first rise in 1572, 14 Eliz. to its Revival in the Beginning of this Century. London: Society of Antiquaries of London.
  
  Frere, Sheppard Sunderland. 1974. Britannia. A History of Roman Britain. London: Cardinal.
  
  Gelling, Margaret. 1978. Signposts to the Past. Place-Names and the History of England. London: Dent.
  
  Gibson, Edmund, ed. 1695. Camden’s Britannia, Newly Translated into English: With Large Additions and Improvements. London: F. Collins.
  
  Haken, Mike. 2018a. “York – Malton?” The Roads of Roman Britain: A Gazetteer. http://roadsofromanbritain.org/gazetteer/yorkshire/rr800.html.
  
  ------. 2018b. “York – Stamford Bridge – Bridlington.” The Roads of Roman Britain: A Gazetteer. http://roadsofromanbritain.org/gazetteer/yorkshire/rr810.html.
  
  ------. 2018c. “York/Stamford Bridge to the River Tees.” The Roads of Roman Britain: A Gazetteer. http://roadsofromanbritain.org/gazetteer/yorkshire/rr80a.html.
  
  Halkon, Peter. 2013. The Parisi. Britons and Romans in Eastern Yorkshire. Stroud: History Press.
  
  Hartley, Brian and Leon Fitts. 1988. The Brigantes. Gloucester: Sutton.
  
  Hassall, Mark W.C., 1976. “Britain in the Notitia.” In Aspects of the Notitia Dignitatum, edited by Roger Goodburn and Philip Bartholomew, 103-17. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
  
  Hayes, Raymond Harland. 1988. Old Roads and Pannierways in North East Yorkshire. Helmsley: North York Moors National Park.
  
  Hayes, Raymond Harland and Jim G. Rutter. 1964. Wade’s Causeway. A Roman Road in North-East Yorkshire. Scarborough: Scarborough District Archaeological Society.
  
  Hunter, Joseph. 1830. Diary of Ralph Thoresby F.R.S. Author the Topography of Leeds (1677-1724). Vol. 1. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley.
  
  Jones, Barri and David Mattingly. 1990. An Atlas of Roman Britain. Oxford: Blackwell.
  
  Kitson Clark, Mary. 1935. A Gazetteer of Roman Remains in East Yorkshire. Leeds: Roman Antiquities Committee of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society.
  
  Longstaffe, William Hylton Dyer. 1880. “The Northern Stations of the Notitia.” Archaeologia Aeliana 8: 287-92.
  
  Lukis, William Collings, ed. 1887. The Family Memoirs of the Rev William Stukeley and the Antiquarian and Other Correspondence. Vol. 3. Durham: Andrews & Co.
  
  Lunn, Norman, Bill Crosland, Bonwell Spence and Granville Clay. 2008. The Romans Came This Way. Huddersfield: Huddersfield and District Archaeological Society.
  
  MacLauchlan, Henry. 1852. Memoir Written During a Survey of the Watling Street, from the Tees to the Scotch Border, in the Years 1850 and 1851. London: Archaeological Institute.
  
  Mann, John C. 1961. “The Administration of Roman Britain.” Antiquity 35: 315-20.
  
  Margary, Ivan Donald. 1955-57. Roman Roads in Britain. 2 vols. London: Phoenix House.
  
  ------. (1955-57) 1967. Roman Roads in Britain. 2nd edition. London: Baker.
  
  ------. (1955-57) 1973. Roman Roads in Britain. 3rd edition. London: Baker.
  
  “Ordnance Survey.” 2016. Roman Britain Historical Map. 6th edition. Reprint. Southampton: Ordnance Survey.
  
  Pettersen, Aina, Christopher Pole, Gavin Robinson and Alan Teasdale. 2012. East Coast Pipeline. North Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire Post-Excavation Assessment Report. Vol. I. Northern Archaeological Associates unpublished report.
  
  Rivet, Albert Lionel Frederick. 1970. “The British Section of the Antonine Itinerary.” Britannia 1: 34-68, with Appendix II by K. Jackson on the place-names: 68-82.
  
  Rivet, Albert Lionel Frederick and Colin Smith. 1979. The Place-Names of Roman Britain. London: Batsford.
  
  Smith, Albert Hugh. 1937. The Place-Names of the East Riding of Yorkshire and York. Cambridge: English Place-Name Society.
  
  ------. 1928. The Place-Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire. Cambridge: English Place-Name Society.
  
  Society of Antiquaries of London. 1718-. Minutes of the Society’s Proceedings.
  
  Spratt, Donald Alexander. 1982. “The Cleave Dyke System.” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 54: 33-52.
  
  Taylor, Christopher. 1979. Roads and Tracks of Britain. London: Dent.
  
  Vyner, Blaise. 2013. Report on Archaeological Investigation of the Wheeldale Linear Monument, Wheeldale Moor, North Yorkshire, 2012. Unpublished report.
  
  ------. In preparation. Wade’s Causeway and the Wheeldale Moor Linear Monument: The End of the Roman Road?
  
  Warburton, John. 1720. A New and Correct Map of the County of York in All Its Divisions. London.
  
  Wilson, Pete. 2002. “Cawthorn Camps: 70 Years after Richmond.” In Limes XVIII. Proceedings of the XVIIIth International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies, edited by Philip Freeman, Julian Bennett, Zbigneiw Tomasz Fiema and Brigitta Hoffman, 859-66. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
  
  ------. 2009. “The Roman expansion into Yorkshire reconsidered.” In Estudios Sobre La Frontera Romana, edited by A. Morillo, N. Hanel and E. Martín, 103-11. Madrid: Counsejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
  
  ------. 2016. “The Roman-Period Name for Adel.” Britannia 47: 280-85.
  
  ------. 2017a. “Derventio, Delgovicia and Praetorio: Some Roman-period Place-names of Eastern Yorkshire Revisited.” Britannia 48: 305-08.
  
  ------. 2017b. “A ‘New’ Roman Fort at Staxton in the Vale of Pickering, Yorkshire, England.” In Roman Frontier Studies, edited by N Hodgson, P Bidwell and J Schachtmann, 342-45. Oxford: Archaeopress Roman Archaeology 25.
• 1 media/vm1-08.jpg 2024-04-28T20:03:44+00:00 Maps and Plans in Vetusta Monumenta 10 Vetusta Monumenta, Thematic Essay: Maps plain 2024-05-13T19:48:35+00:00
  By Elizabeth Baigent
  
  Eighteenth-century England saw a flowering of mapmaking, mostly involving private individuals: commissioners, surveyors, makers, publishers, colourists, sellers, and users. The state survey body, Ordnance Survey, which began its main work at the end of the eighteenth century, came to dominate topographical mapping in the nineteenth, and its approach and style, themselves developed from earlier private mapping, set the tone for private mapping thenceforward. The survey board fostered standardization of style and scale; complete coverage of the land area; the use of modern scientific equipment and techniques; and the production of maps as a general resource, to be on hand to meet a variety of purposes as the need arose.
  
  By contrast, in the eighteenth century there was more variety of style and scale; many maps were of individual places which appear as islands on the sheet; techniques and instrumentation were generally simple; and maps were produced for particular purposes rather than being a general resource. But while the eighteenth-century reading public did not have rigid expectations of the way maps should look, they increasingly expected to see them to help them visualize the point that the text was making and to provide geographical context for it. England was a characterised by a high degree of what has been termed “cartoliteracy” and “map consciousness,” that is, many middle- and upper-class English men and women could read maps and expected to see and use them in a variety of different contexts in their daily lives. These included managing their estates, finding their way when travelling, absorbing news and information in periodicals such as the Gentleman’s Magazine, locating places that they read about in their Bibles, decorating their walls, or attending to their geography lessons. Even children used them in educational play, assembling “dissected puzzles” (jig-saw puzzles) of maps. While some of these eighteenth-century maps, such as estate maps, were manuscript, there being no wide demand for maps of one family’s land, many of the others were engraved and printed. Printed maps appeared both within other publications, such as periodicals or books of views and plans, and as stand-alone items which were decorative objects from the start or became so when the information they depicted was superseded. The inclusion of engraved maps in printed volumes was matched by a similar increase in other types of printed images – prospects, views, building plans, portraits, botanical illustrations, and many others – as the relative cost of producing them went down and the expectations of the reading and viewing public rose.
  
  Against this background we can consider the rather eclectic selection of maps and plans in Vetusta Monumenta. The first thing to say is that it is unsurprising to find them, and not just for the general reasons outlined above. Antiquarians used a variety of visual means, including maps, to record and disseminate information about their findings. A common impulse – pride in one’s locality – underlay the production of both county topographical maps and accounts of the county’s antiquities. Moreover, a sense that a map could capture not only the present topographical facts of a place but also something of its character and distinctiveness led to the inclusion of many topographical maps of threatened relics of the past. Perhaps the best example of this comes from over the border in Scotland. Here William Roy (FRS, FSA) led the great mid-eighteenth-century military mapping project which formed the prototype for Ordnance Survey. The map’s purpose was deadly serious: the 1745 Jacobite uprising, which had only just been suppressed, had shown the military advantage gained by those who knew the terrain. With this purpose uppermost in his mind, Roy excluded from his maps many features unrelated to military tactics and strategic planning; nonetheless he included numerous Roman and later antiquarian remains, such that his map gives a sense of Scotland’s distinctive history as well as its landscape.
  
  We can now consider the individual maps and plans in Vetusta Monumenta in the order in which the plates appear, discussing not so much their content which is dealt with in their individual commentaries, but with their appearance, the cartographic strategies chosen for the task in hand, the work that that they do, and how they compare with other maps and plans that their viewers would be familiar with.
  
  William Stukeley’s 1721 map of Verulamium (Plate 1.8) mixes attention to detail and precision in the antiquarian elements, which are the point of the map, with impressionistic and purely decorative elements in the surrounding parts. His use of two different scales (one for the detailed plan of the wall and a smaller one for the general map) suggests attention to accuracy in survey and measurement, while his orientation of the map with east approximately at the top produces a map which sits well on the page. These elements, plus his scale bars and compass rose, attest to his competence in surveying and mapping, and thus lend credibility to his antiquarian claims. Outside the antiquarian elements his aim is not so much accuracy as attractiveness. The broken column and capital by the cartouche reflect the common inclusion of classical ruins in landscape painting from the seventeenth century, but they are particularly appropriate here given the subject matter of the map. The trees lining the roads are indicative rather than accurate: given the representative strategy Stukeley chooses for them, he cannot include them on both sides without obscuring the road. Similarly, the hatching in the fields may suggest their undulating relief, but is just as likely to be simply occupying some white space, while the hill at centre bottom – named, but of a shape alien to the Hertfordshire landscape – shows Stukeley attending accurately to place names but not invariably to the visual depiction of landscape features.
  
  Like Stukeley’s plan, the second map in Vetusta Monumenta, Francis Drake’s Plan of the Roman Roads in Yorkshire (Plate 1.47), takes up the theme of Roman remains. Drake’s map, though, is at a far smaller scale than Stukeley’s and can best be understood in the context of the flowering of British, particularly English, county mapping in the eighteenth century. As Pete Wilson’s commentary on Plate 1.47 suggests, it is likely that Drake based his map on John Warburton’s Map of The County of York (1720), one of several eighteenth-century maps of Yorkshire which illustrate how growing pride in the county translated into an urge to own a map of it to decorate one’s walls or place in one’s library. Penelope Corfield has described how English county towns flourished in the eighteenth century as economic, administrative, social, cultural, and scholarly centres, and Rosemary Sweet traces the rise of county antiquarianism which explored and celebrated each county’s long and distinctive past. Canny cartographers took advantage of these trends by enlisting the county gentry as subscribers to their projects to produce county maps, and as purchasers of the resultant maps. Collectively there was a patriotic element to this county mapping. Recognising that the country as a whole was unevenly served by county maps and holding that such maps were crucial to the nation’s future, as well as a testimonial to its past, the London-based Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce set out to encourage the production of county maps. In 1759 it introduced bounties, premiums, and prizes to encourage the accurate survey and production of printed county maps at a scale of one inch to one mile (approximately 1:63,000). From 1761 to 1809 just thirteen awards were made, but the cartographic stimulus was far wider, and the accuracy and scale prescribed by the society set the benchmark for mapping for decades to come. The one inch to the mile Ordnance Survey topographical maps, for example, followed the precedent established by county mapping.
  
  Eventually all counties in England were covered by county maps, and Yorkshire caught the attention of some of the finest cartographers of the eighteenth century, including John Rocque, Thomas Kitchen, Emmanuel Bowen, and Thomas Jefferys. Warburton’s and Drake’s maps predate these men’s maps, and they predate the standardization promoted by the Society of Arts. Since Yorkshire was England’s largest county by some margin, many county mappers produced different maps for each of its three ridings. This strategy allowed larger scale (more detailed) coverage. Warburton instead tackled the whole county and his map needed seven sheets to accommodate it, even though its scale of 2 and a half miles to the inch (approximately 1:160,000) was smaller (less detailed) than the one inch to the mile which became standard. Drake’s map, though lacking a scale bar, was at a still smaller scale of about 1:420,000 or more than six miles to the inch and this, combined with his placement of the top of the map not quite at north, allowed him to fit the whole county on one sheet. Though small, the scale was large enough for his purpose which was fairly strictly confined to Roman roads, sites, and names, with other information included largely to help readers situate ancient features with respect to contemporary ones. In fact some apparently fixed contemporary features would have looked different in Roman times – the shape of Spurn Head at the mouth of the Humber, for example, is constantly changing with tidal, wind, and wave action – but this was not known at the time and was not Drake’s concern. A characteristic of many eighteenth-century county maps was a cartouche with elegant classical features such as putti, columns, Roman armour, and figures in classical drapery. These cartouches allowed the cartographer to flaunt his erudition, and to flatter that of his readers. Stukeley followed this convention with a broken column and capital nicely echoing the decline of the Roman city of Verulamium which his map depicted (see above). Ironically given the subject matter of Drake’s map, he includes neither a classical cartouche nor marginalia with classical motifs. All we have, apart from the rather austerely presented subject matter, is a brief dedication and a set of rather improbable looking sailing vessels. Such decorative elements, often added by the engraver and not the cartographer, were often used to fill otherwise white space. Contemporary readers did not see such fancifulness as detrimental to the credibility of the depiction of the map’s subject, though the mix of fancy and accuracy can be challenging for modern readers.
  
  The next map to appear is “A True and Exact Draught of the Tower [of London] Liberties” (Plate 1.63). This elegant piece of work is one of four eighteenth-century versions of the now lost original plan of 1597, being an engraving of 1742 probably by George Vertue after an anonymous pen and ink drawing, probably not Vertue’s own (Keay 2001, 3), of William Hayward’s (or Haiward’s) and J. Gascoyne’s 1597 plan. The Society of Antiquaries’ engraving is, then, at some remove from the original. Such copying of maps was not unusual, particularly when the original was as important as this one: another version, a copy of a now lost eighteenth-century copy of the original, may be seen in the National Archives. The original was so important because it was “the only measured visual source” to set out the appearance of the tower before alterations in the seventeenth century (Keay 2001, vi). Keay points to an even earlier visual source, a fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript, but the key difference is that the Elizabethan survey is a measured visual source. The disappearance of the original plan is regrettable, though not unusual, but a useful feature of the copies is that they all give the survey date (1597), making it clear that they are copies. Such survey dates and indications of copying are particularly useful for interpreting maps. It was so expensive to make maps that “new” maps were often thinly disguised old ones, and the publication date of printed maps can sometimes give an optimistic view of the currency of the information they show. This was a serious problem in rapidly growing towns where reality might substantially part company with what was depicted on a map. Here the survey date anchors the work, and helpfully fixes both the features extant in 1597 and those which had disappeared by that time, for example, the “broken” tower in the Nine Gardens site which is described as having been reduced to the height of the rest of the wall by 1597.
  
  “Draught” was one of the several names, including “plot” or “plat,” which were used for large-scale and fairly large-scale maps before the terminology had settled. Indeed, the commissioner of the original Elizabethan map referred to a “plotte” (Keay 2001, 10–11). The title declares it to be “true and exact,” a claim often made for maps which were nothing of the sort. Here, however, the claim seems plausible. The draught’s apparent authority is supported by the royal coat of arms (probably original to the 1597 plan), by the status of Sir John Peyton, lieutenant of the Tower, who commissioned the drawing (and who had military experience in the Netherlands, where he might well have gained familiarity with local high quality military maps), and by the high quality of Vertue’s engraving. One of the cartographers, Hayward, was an experienced land surveyor. The map was drawn to help resolve a dispute over jurisdiction which, like disputes about land ownership and profitable rights over land, was a common reason for the production of maps. Although such maps by themselves had no legal force, the air of authority that they imparted could lend weight to the argument of their commissioners.
  
  As with the other maps described here, the depictions which are central to its purpose (the boundaries of the liberties) are given fully and commendably accurately, while some of the other information is indicative only: the trees and river vessels occupy space decoratively, and the buildings are in part schematic except where they have a function in fixing the disputed boundary. Similarly, while the ground plan is surveyed and measured, being the important consideration, the elevations of buildings are not, but are drawn freehand. To the left of the sheet we see the compass rose with north to the top. It is not clear if the compass rose is original or added by Vertue: it features on the copy from which Vertue made his engraving and in a different place on another copy (Robert Whitehand’s of January 1712/13), but at all events it seems likely that the original was orientated to the north – not something which was completely standard by 1597 but which works well visually with the Thames anchoring the representation at the bottom of the page and the information about the liberties ranged on the other three sides. At bottom left are a scale bar and dividers with “scala perticarum” indicating the scale in perches (1 perch = 5 and a half feet). The scale is about 1:800, so very large, and all the copies are drawn to the same scale which is, then, probably the scale of the original (Keay 2001, 5 and 7, note 34). The scale bar and dividers feature on all extant copies and so were probably there on the original. The impression of care and accuracy in the production of this map carries over into its text which was original to the 1597 plan: the Antiquaries’ minute book describes the “Alphabetical references” on the original plan (Keay 2001, 7n30). When Anna Keay describes the information on the map as “crammed in”, she intends only to praise its abundance (2001, 8). In fact the map is well laid out, and the result is aesthetically pleasing as well as informative, something which perhaps added to the reasons why so many copies of it were made.
  
  By the time that Vertue produced his engraving, a firm connection had been established between the Tower of London and map making. Map, plans, models for military use had probably been stored at the Tower from the late seventeenth century and, from at least 1717 and possibly earlier, a map Drawing Room was established there. Here maps and models were produced for military use, and later Ordnance Survey maps were drawn and draftsmen trained. The men trained and employed there are closely related to the 1597 plan’s history. Robert Whitehand, whose 1712/13 copy is mentioned above, Clement Lemprière, author of a now lost copy of 1741, and Joseph Heath, whose 1752 copy of Lemprière’s version is extant, were all employed at the Tower Drawing Room, and Whitehand’s copy bears a bold red Board of Ordnance stamp (Marshall 1980; Hodson 1991; Down 2020; Keay 2001, 4, and plate 2). The thorough training of these men and their colleagues and the high standard of work coming out of the Tower gives confidence in the quality of their copies, and of Vertue’s engraving, which is remarkably similar to them. It also suggests that the draughtsmen’s professional appraisal judged the 1597 plan to be worth copying, for its high quality as well as its local connection.
  
  Plates 2.1-2.2 show John Evelyn’s and Christopher Wren’s schemes for rebuilding London after the Great Fire. As they considered the ruined city, many of those who had a vision for its recovery thought that rebuilding would best take place with the aid of maps. If the higgledy-piggledy nature of the pre-fire plots and streets and the irregular shapes of ancient churches were to be replaced by elegant geometric vistas and strictly proportioned façades, rebuilding plans and processes needed to be controlled, and the route to discipline was via objects independent of the land or buildings themselves, namely maps, plans, and/or models. Charles II well understood this, charging those responsible for the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral to build “according to the design and model,” which was to “remain as a perpetuall and unchangeable rule and direction for the conduct of the whole Work” (commission charge of 1673, qtd. in “The Wren Office Drawings”). While models were used only for exceptional buildings, notably St Paul’s Cathedral, since they were very expensive to produce, a rash of mapping broke out, and cheap engraved paper plans jostled with one another for the attention of the public and those in authority. Evelyn’s and Wren’s plans for the new city, featured in Plates 2.1-2.2, are the most famous; Valentine Knight’s, not included here, is the most infamous. His loose grid plan was complemented by a canal to allow for new docks near the River Thames, the profits from which would go to the crown. Charles II, angered by the suggestion that he was looking to profit from what seemed to be a providentially ordained calamity, had Knight briefly imprisoned for his maladroit proposal. Evelyn’s and Wren’s plans are more orthodox, though in the end no unified scheme was realised, since the crown lacked the means to buy out landowners, and post-fire standardisation was largely confined to building materials and façade design. The Great Fire maps and models show the power of graphic media over narrative when it comes to visualising building schemes – though this success could prove dangerous. Not only was Knight imprisoned because his map made his cunning plan for royal profiteering all too clear, Wren got into trouble when his model and plans for St Paul’s cathedral showed viewers quite how far his new church departed from expectations of a safely Protestant building and followed Catholic baroque exemplars.
  
  Plates 2.15–2.16 are based on redrawings of much earlier plans from the Eadwine Psalter. They show that mapping could flourish before the establishment of conventions that we now think of as integral to it. One such convention is the drawing of maps to scale such that one unit on paper strictly corresponds to one unit on the ground. All the maps above are scalar, even if, like Drake’s, they do not declare their scale. The medieval plans here appear not to have any elements drawn to strict scale. Scale mapping probably arrived in England in the sixteenth century but did not become the norm until much later. Being non-scalar does not make maps faulty. We are all used to maps, such as those for the London and other underground railway systems, which are topological rather than scalar, that is, they accurately depict the sequence and connectedness of stations but not the distance between them: that is not their concern. The plans of Canterbury reproduced here are similarly non-scalar and show the buildings and water courses in (approximately accurate) relation to one another, but neither size of feature nor distance from other features is rendered accurately. We do not know the exact purpose for which the plans were drawn, but we should start from the assumption that they were designed in a way which fulfilled their function for contemporaries, even if it is now opaque to us.
  
  Further Reading:
  
  Delano-Smith, Catherine, and Roger J.P. Kain. 1999. English Maps: A History. London: British Library.
  
  Harley, J. Brian. 1963. “The Society of Arts and the Surveys of English Counties 1759-1809.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 112: 43-46,119-25, 269-75, 538-43.
  
  Works Cited:
  
  Corfield, Penelope. 2023. “British History: Town Life.” Blog post. Penelope J. Corfield. Accessed January 3, 2024. https://www.penelopejcorfield.com/british-history/town-life/.
  
  Down, Emma. 2020. "Maps in the Drawing Room." Blog post. National Archives Blog. Accessed January 9, 2023. https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/maps-in-the-drawing-room/#note-48953-2.
  
  Hodson, Yolande. 1991. Map Making in the Tower of London: Ordnance Survey’s Early Years: An Exhibition to Celebrate the Bicentenary of Ordnance Survey. Southampton: Ordnance Survey.
  
  Keay, Anna. 2001. The Elizabethan Tower of London: The Haiward and Gascoyne Plan of 1597. London: London Topographical Society with Historic Royal Palaces.
  
  Marshall, Douglas W. 1980. "Military Maps of the Eighteenth Century and the Tower of London Drawing Room." Imago Mundi 32: 21–44.
  
  Reddaway, Thomas Fiddian. 1940. The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. London: Jonathan Cape, 1940.
  
  Sweet, Rosemary. 2004. Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain. London: Hambledon and London.
  
  "The Wren Office Drawings: 1673: Designs for the Great Model." Accessed January 3, 2024. https://www.stpauls.co.uk/1-designs-for-great-model-1673.