Various central London locations are this week, as part of London Car Free Day (which is today!), stocking free copies of a paper map (you can also order a copy online) for walking routes in central London – it’s called Footways, and was first published last year. The map is in fact an evolution of a map from “Urban Good”, a Community Interest Company based in Hackney, from way back in 2017, and linked to the London National Park City initiative. We reviewed the original and liked the concept, but struggled with some of the cartography. It’s good to see that the Footways version has tweaked the mapping to make it clearer and crisper, while still retaining the “turquoise, pastel and fluorescent” colour ramp that makes it looks so distinctive. The map covers much of “Zone 1”, the central part of London, that is in fact pretty walkable, but as central London has a huge, old and confusing street network, this kind of mapping is a real boon. Much better than just following the line on Google Maps, take a copy of Footways and follow the bright orange lines which thread through the inner city. Large pedestrian-only plazas – oases from cars and other transport noise – are shown in pink. Tube stations are highlighted in block text while major London railway terminuses – which is where many visitors to the capital start their exploration – are prominent in yellow. Unusually for a modern map, there are some textures – the River Thames has wavey lines, and parks and canals have some dot “stipple”. Key prominent buildings are also shown extruded with a slight 3D effect. These cartographic tweaks are subtle but add interest to the visual effect. One really nice touch is that...

The London Greenground Map, by designer Helen Ilus (Hi Design), takes its inspiration from the famous tube map to create a network of walking routes, with parks as “stations” in and around the capital. The map was first created a couple of years ago, but Helen has since refined the map and added detail, while also producing Bristol and Edinburgh editions. Recently, a second edition was unveiled – as well as a fold-up version (just like the pocket tube maps you find in stations in London) there are A0 and A1 posters, and a purchasable digital download. The tube map is non-geographical – you don’t need to know how close each station is to the next, because you aren’t doing the moving yourself. However, a walking map does need to have geographical “correctness” – so the Greenground map sits between the two models. The network is simplified to a serious of straight lines and 45-degree bends, but distances are approximately to scale, and the distances between each link, in miles, is shown. Certain parks, with nature facilities such as bird hides or city farms, are adorned with appropriate symbols, and individual links with locally known names, such as the Parkland Walk above, are also captioned on the map. The colour choices used in Greenground are key to the overall visual appeal to the map. The initial version of the map was predominantly just green which reinforced that this was a map of green spaces, but was a bit overwhelming and made the map look a little too technical. Helen has refined the colours in this new version. River and canal walks use various shades of blues, and some major routes use yellows and reds. This helps create a map that is easier on the...

After nearly a year and a half when much of London has been staying away from its central business district, there’s a big push to get people back into the middle of town. The Mayor of London and Visit London have this week launched Let’s Do London, a drive aimed at families to get them visiting central London attractions. With this in mind, an official tube-based map (endorsed by TfL) of central London has been produced. As well as showing most of the familiar tube map in central London (although where’s the Metropolitan and Jubilee lines gone? No kids in NW London?) it highlights certain seasonal kid-friendly activities, such as Tate Play at the Tate Modern, and the London Transport Museum. There are also various trees with eyes attached, on the map – they look vaguely sinister but are actually giving clues to the locations of various giant inflatable eyeballs that have been placed in real trees on the ground. There’s a pretty big error on the map – the Somerset House dodgems have been moved up to approximately Farringdon – quite a long way from Temple which is actually the closest tube station. But you were hopefully not going to be using this map for navigation...

Time to find some painted lions in central London! The Tusk Lion Trail is a series of life-size fibreglass lions, painted by a variety of artists and comedians including Lee Mack (“Three Shirts on the Lion”) and Noel Fielding, as well as Adam Dant, an artist cartographer much featured on Mapping London before. They are on the ground for the next few weeks, before being auctioned off for charity. 27 have been placed, most witjhin half a mile of Piccadilly Circus but with one in the City of London. There are also three in Edinburgh and one in Bristol. (There’s also one in Wellington, New Zealand, two in Nairobi, Kenya, one in Sydney, Austria, and 12 in the Hamptons, on Long Island, New York, USA, to make a grand total of 47 around the world.) The London pack has a special map produced, to help with locating them. It’s actually just a screenshot of the main Google Maps map for the project but it’s been well done, in a lion-coloured tint with an accompanying set of pictures, names, sponsors and the address of each lion. If you are organised, it should be possible to visit all 27 in a couple of hours. Mapping London will certainly try! It’s not the first parade of fibreglass animals in London – from the original Cow Parade in 2002 to the Elephant Parade in 2010 and 2018, to Shaun in the City in 2015. Now, we have lions. Lots of Lions. You have until the beginning on November to collect them...

People in London generally know what tube zone they live “in”. There are no defined zones as such, zones are simply classifications assigned to each tube and railway station in, so it is likely people label their “zone” based on the zone of their nearest tube/railway station. Your zone, or the number of zones you travel in, set your journey fare. Zones make a big difference to how much it costs to travel around London on the tube and railway network – particularly when travelling into or out of Zone 1 in the centre. As such, there are fairly regularly campaigns to get certain stations reclassified by Transport for London, who defined and control the zone system. Such a change though sometimes creates more problems than it solves – as TfL changed Stratford to Zone 2/3 from Zone 3, after the London 2012 Olympics gave this east London hub more prominence. Changing to Zone 2 would have made it cheaper to get from Stratford to central, but more expense for people travelling from outer London to Stratford – so the Zone 2/3 is a cartographically ugly compromise on the tube map. Anyway – despite the lack of zone “areas” as such, the GLA published a dataset assigning each small statistical area in London to a zone, based on the nearest station – and Alasdair Rae has mapped this data onto a base Ordnance Survey dataset showing all building blocks in London, and coloured all the buildings in each zone with a distinct colour. Visually it is rather striking. It shows, if nothing else, that the fares are “fair” – there is no great consipracy, rather just that they are concentric rings, slightly squished because London is wider than it is tall, due to the...

Route Plan Roll is the creation of Dermot Hanney – his concept is to marry a map of safe London road cycle routes, with proper infrastructure, with the “tube map” which famously simplifies the London Underground network into straight lines and connection points. We’ve featured his maps before, but now Route Plan Roll has taken the concept one step further and linked the network to “places worth cycling across London for” which is surely a nod the the Michelin guide’s definition of a three-star restaurant as “worth a special journey”. Sadly there are not many of the latter in London – and they are still closed anyway due to the pandemic – but Dermot has spotted plenty of places worth hopping on your saddle for, navigating the network of safe routes, and arriving at your destination in style. Mapping London is a fan of both tube maps and cycling so this was always going to feature. We think it’s a great map – a little too much green perhaps (used for parks as well as the very best quality of the cycleways) but the “network” is clear to see – along with obvious gaps in it, often due to political reasons in west London and some other areas. The Thames is on there, of course. It’s just as much a challenge to cycle across as walk across. The approximate boundary of the sadly stagnated Santander Cycles zone is shown with a red dotted line. The map doesn’t show off-road cycling routes such as along towpaths or through paths – this is very much focused on getting people out on the streets to visit businesses, as lockdown eases. See Dermot’s tweet here or download a PDF of the map directly here. Spotted by Mapping-London co-editor-at-large...

History Map of South Tottenham We’ve all had plenty of to explore our local areas, over the last year, with several lockdowns and other movement restrictions meaning that our local village, town or part of London is our exercise arena. With this in mind it’s always nice to discover good quality local maps, ones that focus on a particular area, highlighting things that might be missed at first glance. This walking map of the southern part of Tottenham, created by the Bridge Renewal Trust (a charity in the area) as part of a community history project and drawn by illustrator Jane Smith, is a great example of a local interest map – every area of London should have one! We like the fact this is a map created specifically for the Tottenham area, rather than be excerpted from an OpenStreetMap of Google Maps screenshot. It both contains the almost complete road network and also in-place miniature sketches of points of interest – not just pins on a map. The map covers the area roughly bounded by Green Lanes, Tottenham High Road, the New River and West Green Road. It includes attractions as diverse as the fantastical Tottenham Town Hall, the High Cross and the “Seven Sisters Snail” (a personal favourite), along with the many now brightly decorated factories-cum-artist-studios of the Warehouse District. Existing features are coloured, but, as this is a history map, it also includes in black and white, things that are no longer present, such as the Harringay Stadium (now a supermarket). This is a wonderful idea for mixing the past and present. The Harringay Warehouse District on the map. One side of the leaflet contains the main map, which is drawn in a pleasing brown and green colour palette. The other...

London has a long and gruesome history – indeed part of its tourist industry is focused on tours and attractions based on the “Jack the Ripper” cases, so there was always going to be plenty of London-related content in this new book written by Dr Drew Gray at the University of Nottingham and published by Thames & Hudson, “Murder Maps“, which focuses on revisiting crime scenes, from 1811 to 1911. The book does not disappoint London-based readers, indeed, with the main part of the 220-page, 730-illustration book being focused on regions and cities, the first such area is London, with 30 pages of grim stories, maps and pictures. The author has used historical maps, representing the area at the time of the incident and showing the chronology of notorious crimes, simply highlighted on the maps with red and black numbered dots. The quality of reproduction of the map is excellent, allowing in most cases a clear understanding of the street structure of the time. Jack the Ripper gets 6 pages, including a double-page map showing the pub that was the common link, the 10 murder locations and the 2 homes of the main suspects (Dr Gray having recently proposed an alternative suspect). Each case has a date, name of murderer and victim, weapon, typology (e.g. accidental) and policing information, location, map and a newspaper drawing, typical of the press at this (pre-photography) time, often from Illustrated Police News: Many of the maps incidentally come from the excellent David Rumsey map collection, a fantastic online resource of historic maps from around the world. Murder Maps: Crime Scenes Revisited; Phrenology to Fingerprint 1811–1911 is available now from Amazon and all good bookstores. Murder Maps. Cover design © Thames & Hudson. Thanks to Thames & Hudson for...

JUMP bikes – weekend usage heatmap from Uber Movement. The bright red JUMP bikes are alas gone from the streets of London, following the takeover of Uber’s JUMP micromobility division by rival Lime. They may be back on the streets, maybe painted green, soon. But for now, we can view this amazing datamap of where they went during in Q1 2020 (January to March this year), using the Uber Movement platform. The data is also downloadable. The fleet was as large as 1800 bicycles in summer 2019, but dwindled to around 600 during the early part of 2020, before disappearing completely earlier in June. The bikes were allowed to be left in Islington and Camden boroughs, and later Hackney and Kensington & Chelsea. Notably, this didn’t include the City of London, so piles of the bikes were often clustered at the boundary of the City on weekday mornings, particularly around Finsbury Square, where Hackney, Islington and the City meet. It also didn’t include Westminster (shown as Chinatown and Maida Vale in the maps here). The weekday vs weekend differences in the maps tell the story of how people move around inner north London – the emphasis is on north-south journeys down towards the City during weekdays, with cross-way journeys mainly appearing closer to the centre of London, particularly the “Route 0” running just to the south of Euston Road, which is well know as one of central London’s principal cycle routes. JUMP bikes – weekday usage heatmap from Uber Movement. Conversely, Broadway Market in the east, Hampstead Village in the west and Highbury Fields in the north are three key destinations for bikeshare users at weekends – where there is no strong directional flow. Closer to the centre of London, where Santander Cycles competes,...

Missing travelling on the London Underground? Now, you can see the trains running, live, on this custom-made circuit board showing thetube network. An array of lights, one for each tube and DLR station, uses open data from Transport for London to show the approximate positions of the full fleet of trains running along the various lines. As trains enter stations, the corresponding LED will light up. So, at a glance, you can see if the Piccadilly Line is down again. There are two versions – a smaller one uses white LEDs for the train positions, while a forthcoming expanded one uses colour LEDs corresponding to trains on the line concerned (the Northern line uses white LEDs, in case you were wondering). The currently available smaller board is still pretty big – 20x15cm – and would make a great bit of electronic wall art for your data-driven apartment. Simply attach a plugged in USB key to provide power. The circuit board is made by TrainTrackr, they also make similar minute metro circuit board maps the MTBA in Boston, with plans to expand to other metro systems with live data feeds. TrainTrackr arose out of the Cambridge Hackspace in the Greater Boston area in the USA. It’s great seeing a small startup taking a concept and making it a physical product – and even better if it involves a map of the iconic London Underground. It’s not the first tube map to appear on a circuit board. An artist produced a one-off tube map circuit board which was a working radio, a few years back. And the original tube map itself, with its 45-degree angles and straight lines, was directly inspired by circuit diagrams (Harry Beck’s 1930s original prototype directly referencing them). Almost all the official...

Blue Crow Media, long-time makers of bespoke themed maps of London and other places, have switched from their regular architecture focus and produced a lovely new map focusing on notable trees in the capital. There are around as many trees as people in London, but some trees are more notable than others, and this map and guide aims to highlight these. The guide has curated by been Paul Wood (nominative determinism in action!) and includes some appropriate photos of a number of the highlighted trees. The map is presented in an attractive green sleeve. Upon removing this, the map itself folds out into A2, covering an area from Richmond Park in the south-west to Wanstead Park in the north-east. The basemap is a customised render of OpenStreetMap mapping data, with appropriately woody colour hues (greens and browns) used to highlight parks and major roads, while an electric blue makes the rivers, always an important navigational feature of London, pop out. The special trees themselves are shown by around 50 white dots, captioned in black with the tree’s type (e.g. London Plane) or its special name (e.g. Sweet Chestnut). On the reverse side, a short guide details why each of these trees is worth making a special visit too: In these current locked-down times, your options for visiting more than the nearest one may be visit, but once London life returns to normal, then this map is your ideal tool for an arboreal adventure. Even if the nearest Great Tree is beyond your exercise “range”, take a look at your neighbourhood – there’s bound to be a big tree not too far away and it’s peak blossom time. From the Yoshino Cherries to the Handkerchief Tree, and from a fig tree near Angel, to an...

“Bloody London” is a new book by author, illustrator cartographer David Fathers. Previously writing about the Thames Path in London, the Regents’ Canal and London’s “lost rivers“, David has for this book focused on a more general “gruesome and horrific” history of the capital, focused around 20 walks, each of which is for a different part of the city, joining together several points of historic interest. Buy the book on Amazon (published 2 April 2020). The book may look quite small but runs to over 120 pages and each page is packed full of narrative, illustrations and often a section of walk map. You definitely get your money’s worth of content, and yet the book is small enough to fit into a coat pocket. Each walk is between 1km and 10km, and typically includes around 10 points of interest. Each walk includes a number of maps and points of interest, with one map end joining onto the beginning of the next. Some focus on particular areas of London, some look at a theme, such as prisons, and some take on a single event or sequence of events, such as the Great Fire of London (in 1666), the Jack the Ripper murders (in 1888) or the first Zepplin Raid (in 1915), and walk the reader between different places in that were key locations of the incident: Mapping London has long been a fan of the author’s simple, effective cartography, showing the walking route, key street labels and with parks, rivers and landmarks attractively highlighted – but no clutter. The route maps are critical to linking the narrative together, and straightforward for the reader to follow. With the current London lockdown due to a health emergency, actually getting out and doing the walks is not practical...

One of London’s hardest challenge, the Circle Line Pub Crawl, got even harder a few years ago when Transport for London reconfigured the line to have a “tail” extending down to Hammersmith. Now, there are 35 tube stations and corresponding pubs to have your half-pint at. This map of the line and the nearest pubs to each station, was commissioned by Londonist for their “Londonist Drinks” book that was published late last year. It was drawn by illustrator Olivia Whitworth, who also created the Secret Rivers map we featured last month. Mapping London likes the little pub illustrations – a reminder of London’s diverse pub architecture. The map is “underlined” by the River Thames which forms the southern limit of the tube line and so drinking experience. If you cross the Thames trying to get from pub to station, you’ve gone wrong. Some trees, park benches and statues are added for good measure – appropriately enough with nearby drinkers. The map is finished in a pleasing red, blue and yellow colour palette. The whole piece is rather nice and makes your reviewer quite thirsty – might start with just a segment though. Do not underestimate the logistics of not only drinking at 35 different pubs in the approximately 12 hours of a single drinking day, but getting between them in an ever inebriated state – finding the way back to the station, moving one stop along, and then to the next pub… good luck! See some further excerpts of the map on the illustrator’s portfolio, and if you like Olivia’s drawing style be sure to check out her personalised egg sketches. Images © Olivia...

London has a lot more rivers than just the River Thames and River Lea – but many of the rest are either very small and easily overlooked, or buried underground (culverted), typically by industrious Victorians looking to clean up channels that became sewers, or to create extra space to build infrastructure on. There are a number of maps and books (and even a porcelain piece) detailing these lost rivers and subterranean spaces – that often reveal themselves through streetnames, strange dips in street topographies, or unexpected lakes in parks. One of the most attractive and informative maps that we’ve seen is this work by illustrator Olivia Whitworth, which was featured in the Telegraph newspaper last year. It combines the factual – tracing the routes and neighbourhoods of the secret rivers – with the artistic – attractively illustrating the above-ground features that give a clue to what lies below. From the Westbourne (which feeds the Serpentine in Hyde Park) to the River Peck (which gives Peckham its name) and the New River (which isn’t a river – as shown on the map, it does not flow down to the Thames at sea level, but rather terminates in Islington – it is a historic drinking water channel.) A key distinguishes hidden parts of the rivers in light blue from darker blue above-ground above-ground sections. Remember next time you see a mysterious dip in London’s urban landscape – the contours could be hinting at a long-forgotten river that lives on under your feet and in maps like these. You can see this map and more at Olivia’s portfolio. Images © Olivia...

This creation by Arturs D, a volunteer at the London Transport Museum, is a faithful transplantion of the original c.1933 H.C. “Harry” Beck London tube map, the first to show the network as a diagram with rigid lines and corners – to the modern day network. The official Transport for London map is itself the modern successor to the Beck original, however over time it has evolved in design – from the coloured diamond interchanges being replaced with black circles, to the increasing clutter of adding several non-tube networks (DLR, Trams, TfL-managed heavy rail and now riverbus stops), station note “daggers” and accessibility markers. So, taking this step back to the simple, revolutionary “circuit board” design, but incorporating the changes to the tube itself, is a breath of fresh air. Arturs has taken great care to keep the original look and feel of the 1933 map, with its varying colours and some cartographic inconsistencies. Sure, you could fix these, but then it wouldn’t be a homage to the original, and the temptation to over-detail would be there. The “Under Consideration” for the proposed extension of the Bakerloo line is a nice touch, and the Northern Line extension is included too – again, both echoing the style of the original. The distinctive overall tone produces something which the modern traveller can use while giving it an instant vintage “wall art” appeal too. How brilliant would it be if TfL released this as one of their “official” maps? You can find out more about the map on Arturs’ Twitter account or at Gumroad where a high-resolution version is available for download for an optional donation. Discovered on Londonist. Design copyright Arturs D, based on an original which is copyright Transport for...

The days may be short, but London comes alive in the month leading up to Christmas, with a number of Christmas Markets popping up at various scenic, tourist friendly locations, to provide a bit of mulled wine, bratwurst and handmade Christmas gifts. Liam Coultman of Things to Do in London created this map to show the locations of 10 of London’s largest such markets, while working on a more general feature of London at Christmas. Courtesy of Liam...

Following the original 2017 edition and a 2018 update, The East End Trades Guild have launched a new version of their specially created map of independent retail businesses in the East End of London, many of whom sell unique, locally made gifts ideal for Christmas. The attractively designed cartographical keepsake describes itself as “a map of small businesses for those that seek quality, distinctiveness & character”. The simple but effective cartography uses pastel yellows, greens and blues, the latter two with a brush effect, to show built up areas, parks and the rivers respectively. This frees the wider colour palette and map space for illustrations of the various business products, and number circles to show the locations of their showrooms, factories or retail outlets. The design invites an exploration of certain streets with a great concentration of such businesses, such as Mare Street in Hackney and Shoreditch High Street, but the map extends from Angel in the west right out to the Olympic Park in the east. This new edition was designed by Frederike Huber with the illustrations by Eleanor Crow, and produced in conjunction with The Gentle Author and supported by Hackney Council. It is of course also printed locally, at Aldgate Press. The paper map is available at a number of the retailers featured on it, for example in the Welcome to the Forest Bar in Walthamstow. Photos of map from Eleanor’s Twitter...

Adam Dant, artist, creates art which is often based around a geographical location, using cartography to frame a topic, often drawing out a key road or other structure into a simple geometric shape. This is particularly evident The Gilded Desert, which uses the famous King’s Road, drawn here as a straight line through the heart of the work, to illustrate locations in Chelsea associated with artists. The road bisects two other straight lines, the Thames/Cheyne Walk and Fulham Road, with other roads curved between the three. The straight roads are beams of light, eminating from a corner, with artist tryptyches shown as sparkles. The Gilded Desert is available at TAG Fine Arts. © Adam...

The season for giving and receiving approaches once again. Here’s Mapping London’s guide to the best gifts for that London, or cartographical, enthusiast in your life: London Poverty Maps (Our Review / Buy on Amazon)This hardback book is an impressive size and is beautifully finished, giving justice to the Charles Booths that provide such a powerful snapshot of London’s deprivation and social variations in the late 19th century. A to Z History of London (Our Review / Buy on Amazon)Using the famous A to Z maps, past and present, to chart the development, change and themes of the capital city.Bomb Damage Maps (Our Review / Buy on Amazon)Collated in one volume, these maps of the damage wrought on London by the second world war, are eye-catching in their detail, colouring individual houses, and provide an insight into a period of dramatic change in the city. Maps of London & Beyond (Our Review / Buy on Amazon)Adam Dant’s many map-underpinned artworks are presented together in this large format book. See also the Mapping London...

Quite a bit of creative activity is going on in the south-west London borough of Wandsworth, as this map & guide, produced late last year, illustrates well. Art hotspots are picked out subtly as numbers (with caption on the back) while illustrations of landmark buildings, parks, and people give it a real-world feel. This being a London map, tube and railway stations are also highlighted. The map was drawn by Dale Crosby...

The FT has run a couple of articles [$] recently on housing in Peckham and the Old Kent Road area in south-east London – the latter being the focus of an extension – some day – of the Bakerloo tube line – and to accompany both of them, they commissioned freelance illustrator Laura Hallett to draw these illustrations of the area. We like the distinctive colour accents for the maps, with roads and terrain in different shades of the same hue. Road names give a general indication of the location, and the meticulously detailed illustrations of places of interest help bring the area to life. Key railway stations are highlighted with illustrations of their signs outside. Trees remind the viewer that it’s a green part of the capital. The overall cartography is a nice balance of detail and attractiveness, and the watercolour “grain” gives it a crisp, historical feel. © Laura...

An eye-opening version the Tube Map for central London was published by the FT today (& on Twitter). The graphic, created by Steven Bernard of the FT Data team, is based on “PM 2.5” air pollution particulate matter readings, measured by FT researchers while travelling in tube carriages between stations in an area roughly bounded by the circle of the Circle line. It shows that the deep-level tube lines are worse for PM 2.5 than the “cut and cover” ones (which form the border circuit of the map here), but that pretty much everywhere in the zone has PM 2.5 readings above the WHO safe limit. It also shows that once again, the Central line is the line that you really don’t want to be on (and that should have had many of its journey now replaced by the Elizabeth line – however that is now very late). Be it crime, temperature, overcrowding or pollution, the Central line always wins. The accompanying article goes into detail about the measurement work, the nature of the dust, and how hard it is to clean. It’s surprising that only in the last 3 years has TfL started to think seriously about the pollution in the central London tube tunnels, some of which have been carrying passengers for more than a century. ©FT. Created by Steven...

Buy the book. Perhaps the world’s most famous historical geodemographic maps, the London Poverty Maps were created by Charles Booth over the course of a decade in the late 19th century, exhaustively colouring each individual house in the capital, on the basis of observations of the deprivation levels of the inhabitants by him and his team of assistants. Mapping London reviewed an exhibit at the Museum of London featuring the maps, many years ago, and now a new book has just this month been published, which curates the maps, along with selected observation notebook notes and photographs of the time, into a single volume. The book, now published by Thames & Hudson in association with the London School of Economics (LSE) who hold an original set of the maps and the notebooks, makes an immediate impression with its size – a two-page spread is half a metre wide, allowing high quality reproductions of the maps on the pages, with individual house detail clearly visible. The iconic key from the maps, with its striking categorisations from a more forthright time – “viscious, semi-criminal” is one of the captions – appears on the front cover. Inside, the book starts with a graphical index of the notebooks and maps it reproduces. The 12 district maps of London then are placed evenly throughout the 290 pages of the book. Each district is introduced with a simple demographic profile of the area at the time (e.g. gender ratio, age breakdown) obtained from similar historical works to the Booth project: The coloured district map itself is then reproduced: This then followed by some of the more interesting pages from the observation notebooks, and the preparatory maps used to create the classification of the area: These are almost more interesting than...

The Fallen Fruit project, by David Allen Burns and Austin Young in the US, allows communities to map publically owned/accessible trees in their neighbourhood which are likely groaning with fruit to eat, at this kind of year. There is an online Google-powered map, Endless Orchard, but Mapping London was particularly taken with their printed maps, some of which are on display as part of an exhibition on depictions of fruit, at the V&A Museum in South Kensington. The maps are quite spartan to look at but show a local street network, with stars indicating fruit trees, and codes inside the starts indicating the fruit type. “Ap” is the code if you like apples. The maps appear at the end of this online magazine. London has as many trees as people. The ones on Fallen Fruit are either in, or overhanging, public spaces in London – so presumably fair game and not scrumping. Get them before the squirrels and pigeons...

The A to Z is a bit of an institution when it comes to London maps. It, along with the Tube Map, is probably the most famous and well known London map, and certainly the most famous atlas. We’ve reviewed a historic A-Z map of London before, but not the modern one that you will find in many bookshops, newsagents and petrol stations across the city and country. So, when this book – not a map! – the A to Z History of London – arrived in Mapping London Towers, we were curious. What the book is not, is (just) a history of the A to Z map. Rather, it is a book about the history and geography of London, with A to Z maps used to frame the narrative. Broadly, there are three sections – looking at its growth through the ages, then looking at particular London themes (e.g. newpapers, markets, architecture, crime, tourism) and then finishing by focusing on few iconic London neighbourhoods. To do this, the narrative is illustrated by A to Z maps, be it historic ones from the first editions dating back to 1936, or the most recent full-colour versions of the map, and everything in-between. Pre-1936, other historic maps, such as Rocque’s 18th century map, or Booth’s poverty map, are used. The other distinctive style in the book which elevates it above just a written history, is the pulling out and highlighting of a single statistic into a number and caption, on many of the pages. It’s a great way to get someone, idly flicking through the pages, drawn into a particular story. Mapping London’s favourite part of the book is the final section, looking at specific London locations – those which have radically changed since the first...

London is taking part in World Car Free Day, and the Mayor of London’s office has produced a special map showing the extent of road closures (to motor vehicles) or reimagined roads (to everyone else). The area covers almost the whole of the City of London, plus Tower Bridge and Tooley Street on the south side of the river. The map uses a pleasing green to show the closed roads – after all, they are closed to motor vehicles but open to people. Just for a day (from...

Drawn in a similar era to the historic map of Kew, here is another map from the archives of Transport for London at the Transport Museum, which show the green and bucolic land that now forms London’s suburbs, in the early 1900s – i.e. after the tube tracks and stations had been built, but before there were (many) houses. Its purpose was to promote how nice and rural the area was, to encourage people to up-sticks from the crowded inner London and start a new life here – while still using what are now TfL services to commute back in – thus guaranteeing a consistent revenue stream for the company. The basic costs of living in each community are helpfully included – what is now council tax, along with gas, water and electricity – all the services you need in a pre-internet era. The map purports to be a birds-eye-view (or perhaps a balloon-eye-view, based on its time) looking north from somewhere above Kingston. Richmond is “a centre for pleasures of all kinds” and Kew Gardens is “open free”, while Brent is a “land of green fields and shady elms”, according to strategically placed boxes with captions. A map of the same area today would be mainly covered by the classic 1930s “metroland” – endless rows of semi-detached family houses. Back then, it was a case of build the lines and they will come. The map was drawn by Charles Sharland in 1912, and lithographically printed by Waterlow and Sons. It can be found on the London Transport Museum website, who also sell printed reproductions of...

This decorative map, simply called “Kew”, was produced by Herry Perry of Vincent Brooks lithographers in 1929. It was part of a series of posters commissioned for what is now Transport for London and actually depicts the area to the south of modern-day Kew, running down to Surbiton. Like the rest in the series (Hounslow, Edgware, South Harrow and Morden), it highlights the end of a tube line – in this case, Kew Gardens and Richmond on the District line, and shows bus routes, indicated by roads with red borders, from the line end to parks and pubs, golf courses and historic buildings, encouraging visitors to make use of the tube/bus combination to visit a new area. Of particular note, the Kew map covers an area which has not really changed much in the intervening 90 years – Bush(e)y Park, Richmond Park and the Royal Gardens (now Kew Gardens) still dominate the area, and little of the green space shown has since developed into housing. It might be possible to use this map for a modern day visit to the area – but keep your smartphone handy just in case. There is lots of lovely detail on this map, such as the trees drawn in the parks, the odd bus going along the marked routes, and various figures shown playing sports or taking photos. Short snippets of text add further information about some locations on the map, and the pubs are not only named but often have their signboard drawn on the map too. The scale bar and direction arrow is also a thing of beauty. It is shown as a a special TfL “roundel”: Note that the map completely omits drawing the railway line which connects Mortlake and Richmond to Twickenham, Teddington, Kingston...

This stylised map of central London was created by MUTI, a South African design studio, and is “as seen in Mary Poppins Returns”, a film which was out in cinemas earlier this year. It was commissioned by High Life (the British Airways inflight magazine). It’s a nice bit of artistic cartography, with two obvious landmarks (Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge) located in approximately the right place with respect to the all-important River Thames and each other. The blush pink, turquoise, violet and amber colour palette is also very attractive. Discovered on Dribbble. ©...

The Prudential RideLondon weekend takes place this year on August 3-4. One of the events is Freecycle, when some of central London’s biggest roads are closed to motor traffic, and anyone with a bike can enjoy seven miles of wide roads with just thousands of other cyclists for company (it can get very busy so, unlike the other RideLondon events that weekend, this is not one for the fast cyclist). The event organisers have produced this map, showing the route and surrounding streets, along with “lead in” routes along nearby cycle “superhighway” routes – after all, you need to get your bike to the circuit in the first place. It’s a nice bit of clean, crisp cartography which shows not just the route but also various hubs where other activities are taking place. Food points and music bands are also marked. Riders can join and leave at any point. See the official web page for more information about the event, including high-resolution version of the map. From the event...

We featured a map showing London’s North Bank earlier in the summer – just in time for the peak holiday season, the rivals across the Thames now have a new map of their own! “South of the River” (larger version here, or download a PDF here) aims to map everything of tourist and local interest between Vauxhall Bridge and Tower Bridge. The fold-out guide helps the visitor navigate along the South Bank and understand how it, and the nearby Vauxhall, Waterloo, Bankside and London Bridge neighbourhoods all fit together (the business promoters for all five areas have collaborated for the project). With a copy of the map, you can start at, for example, Vauxhall City Farm, and then navigate to Gabriel’s Wharf for lunch, stroll past City Hall, and end up at the White Cube in Bermondsey. A couple of specific trails are included – the Thames Path is shown by black dots, while a blue line shows the new Low Line, which weaves in and out of the railway arches that are a defining feature of, but no longer a barrier to, the area. Train and tube stations are marked, along with river boat piers and public toilets. Attractions are generally shown with little sketches. On the other side of the map, each of the five districts has a pen portrait. It’s a really nice piece of local-area mapping, creating an attractive piece that invites the holder to explore (N.B. smaller roads and most paths are not included for clarity, so you might still need Google Maps for the fine detail). The distinctive and pleasant colour scheme is bright without being overpowering. There is a “mini-map” for getting to the area from the other side of the river, which conveniently has the District/Circle...

This map, dating from 1875, appears on the back of a “Guinea season ticket” for entry to Alexandra Palace, in north London. The palace was recently restored and public entrance is now available to some areas for free. It’s a nice, vintage map, and the use of colour is interesting and attractive, with key parks coloured in and named, and the River Thames drawn with blue lines along the direction of flow. The map is finished with a gold decorative border. It does suffer a little from overlapping of names and lines in places (e.g. around Bank). It shows not only line names (and colours) but also major road names. Angel is referred to by the “Angel Inn” (the tube station hadn’t yet been built – this is pre deep-tube) and interestingly the main line King’s Cross station was called Great Northern station – but the tube station nearby is called King’s Cross. At the front is a grand drawing of Alexandra Palace itself, mc=uch as it looks today, but with the addition of a hot air balloonist above. It states the view is from “Muswell Hill” which is curious. At first glance, looking at Alexandra Palace from the opposite direction appears to line up, while the “back” of the current palace, which faces Muswell Hill, is without the promenade or much of the park, and spoilt by a car park. However, perhaps 140+ years ago it was indeed more symmetrical. However, the current range of rail options to the palace are much reduced – the Finsbury Park – Highgate – Alexandra Palace Station line is closed (and is now the Parkland Walk) while the Stamford Hill to Wood Green link never got built (although it might appear as part of Crossrail 2 in...

The public may not be able to visit Tottenham Court Road station’s Crossrail concourse or platforms yet, thanks to the well-publicised delay across the wider project, but the station was one of the most complete in the central section, a year ago, and so it was possible to visit the station as part of Construction Open Doors, shortly before the news of the big delay came out. Visitors were let into the new Dean Street ticket hall (approximately half way between Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road’s existing ticket hall), down to the platforms and along to the far end. One nice surprise is this concept artwork appearing on the walls in three different places, and in three different colours. It is in fact, a heavily abstracted map of the local area. Built up areas are represented by the circles, with the spaces in them being roads. Small TfL roundels denote underground stations, while a simple house symbol in the middle of a square space is a nod to the Soho Square “cottage” ventilation shaft. The white-on-black version appears in the Dean Street ticket hall, while the grey-on-white version is down at platform level. At the other end, just the other side of the existing Tottenham Court Road station, the circulation area has a red version of the map – the stronger colour here reflecting the vibrancy of the area as Soho merges into Theatreland: In the red map above, split across at least four smoked glass panels, a single roundel sits in the middle of a long, horizontal street – Oxford Street. Regent Street crosses here from top to bottom. Further to the right is Soho Square with its “house”, and just to the right and up a bit is the roundel for...

The weather’s lovely at the moment – the last thing you want to do is spend that time deep down in the bowels on London, on the deep tube network, surely? Or maybe at least, how about alighting one stop early and walking the last bit? But how long would that take? Back in 2017 we featured a special tube map produced by Transport for London, that featured numbers along each segment in the network – the estimated travel time in minutes if you walked between each station. Sometimes, it’s faster, and sometimes, it’s healthier, to walk a route you would normally take the tube along. The map only included tube lines, and only in Zones 1-2. Beyond that distances between stations tend to be longer, and the network is less crowded, so the benefits and likelihood of people switching to walking would be reduced More recently, TfL has, however, extended the map. It now goes to the edge of Zone 3, and crucially includes the inner city National Rail network (i.e. non-TfL) too. These means suddenly large parts of south London’s complex suburban network now appear, with walking indications. The extension means the Victoria line is fully covered – TfL estimate that it would take the average person to walk 5 hours and 3 minutes. Some of these measurements still look suspect – 9 minutes from Warren Street to Euston seems generous, as it’s only two blocks along and one up the Fitzrovia grid system. The shortest time on the network is 2 minutes from Canary Wharf to Heron Quays – you can definitely see one platform from the other – followed by 4 minutes from Mansion House to Cannon Street – in fact if you run this particular leg, you can beat...

This map, “Hooking Up”, was produced by the Evening Standard newspaper as part of their Future London project, in association with Source London, a service provider/lobbyist of charging points in London, and Zap-Map, who hold a comprehensive database of the locations of these facilities. The map can be seen in an Evening Standard article detailing how each borough is expanding its public electric charge point network – a critical piece of infrastructure needed for a cleaner, more efficient future where London’s motor vehicles will be electrically powered. While the map is a bit naughty in its colour scheme, using various different hues to represent a linear scale (number of charge points in each borough), can also see the key metric simply from the size of the circle representing each borough. The different hues, combined with translucency, also allow the circles to overlap slightly without much loss of visual impact of each circle, allowing the boroughs to remain in the approximately correct geographical location while allowing the big facility boroughs (Westminster, Hounslow, Hammersmith & Fulham, Wandsworth and Greenwich) to rightly dominate the map. The slightly overlapping circles also look a little like a cartoon exhaust cloud, which may have been a deliberate idea. The map is finished off with a really clever touch – the all-important River Thames is shown as a charging cable. The map was drawn by Adrian Black, a graphic designer who regularly contributes to the Evening Standard. Found online. © Adrian Black/Evening...

You know about London’s South Bank – the other side of the river has been looking on at envy at the pedestrian utopia over there and has created this guide and walking map to the “Northbank” – the area stretching from Trafalgar Square to Aldwych. The map has been drawn by Olivia Brotheridge and was commissioned by Northbank BID (Business Improvement District). It’s great to see so much detail in a map like this – it doesn’t overwhelm, but the full street and alley network is included, along with the many landmarks that crowd the streets in this very central part of the capital. The slightly pastel yellows, blues and greens that dominate the map give it a nice uniformity in design. A number of font styles help provide navigational and feature order, from small alleyways to major streets and key building names. With the junction of Strand and Waterloo Bridge being one of London’s pollution hotspots, and with tens of thousands of cyclists, pedestrians, bus-users and taxis passing the junction every day, a focus of the map is on encouraging walking routes – given the intensity of this area, this focus is understandable and encouraging. You can find out more about the map and their initiative to encourage walking and reduce pollution in this area, on the Northbank BID website. – you can also download a PDF copy of the map with an accompanying guide. Some local businesses in the area may also have paper copies available (and if you are a local business here you can order your own.) Spotted in the Covent Gardner...

This artistic map of a green walking route in central London has been created by graphic designer Helen Ilus. By showing just the parks that are the focus of the walk, and not the rest of London’s hustle and bustle, it is an effective and attractive way of highlighting the walk. The walk goes from St James’ Park and its Duck Island Cottage, to the viewpoint back across the centre of the capital, on Primrose Hill. By combining this kind of thematic map with Google Maps or a regular street map, the walker has all they need for a pleasant, urban day out. For those for whom seven miles is a little short, this 24 mile extravaganza – The Grand Green Tour, is a big loop around many inner London parks, both north and south of the River Thames. You will, for sure, be tired after 12 hours of pounding the pavements, so it’s a good one for a cycle, or for splitting into a several legs. A third graphic from Helen, “Wild Weekend”, looks further out from central London, framing two walks in outer London – the North walk being focused around Hampstead, Finsbury Park and the Lea Valley, the South walk going from Barnes to Richmond and Bushy Park, with a suggestion that each walk will comfortably fill a day: Mapping London really likes the strong design elements of these maps – greens and blues, and plenty of white space to present a decluttered look. You might know some or all of these parks already, if you live in London – but did you know you can link them together efficiently in this way? Created By Helen Ilus. Images from the illustrator’s Twitter...

The Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich reopens this weekend after a two-year renovation and restoration. At the entrance to the new visitor centre in the old undercroft underneath the hall, sits this backlit copy of a historic map-style engraving of the Maritime Greenwich complex. In the middle are the two key buildings in the Old Royal Naval College, each with their own cupolas – the Chapel on the left and the Painted Hall on the right. Behind, is Queen’s Anne’s House, now part of the National Maritime Museum complex. On the hill, slightly to the right and sitting on (and defining) Longitude = 0°, is the Royal Observatory. The modern day view is surprisingly similar, the main addition being an unpleasant and busy road running between the college and the house. Only in the periphery to the left and the right, has the modern city developed. The engraving is from the 18th century and is entitled “The prospect of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich on the River Thames”. Its was drawn by Colen Campbell”. It can be purchased in the shop underneath the Painted Hall or at Royal Museums Greenwich. A slightly later version, with an addition of a statue in the courtyard, is in the Wellcome Collection. View from inside the cupola on the right – viewed from the vestibule of the Painted Hall. With thanks to the Old Royal Naval College for a preview visit to the restored Painted...

The John Snow Cholera Map is world famous as the map that identified the cause of the disease, and was one of the first epidemiological maps created. However, a number of other maps of the location of individuals with the disease were produced at around the same time, in an attempt to try and determine spatial patterns and possible causes. The Wellcome Trust‘s collection contains many of these maps and various graphs and other data visualisations of the disease’s spread. Various theories were tested, from postulating the airborne spread of a “mist” of the disease, to looking at the location with respect to the sewer network, underground geology, or simply height above sea level. We show excerpts of three such maps here, all good examples of data mapping in London in the 1800s. Above (source) is a map of an outbreak in London’s east end in 1866, with dots showing each victim. Red lines show the sewer network and areal colours correspond to different rock types. Blue lines show water supply catchment areas and the outbreak source is circled in red. The dot data was likely rolled onto an existing topology/geology map of London rather than the full map being drawn specifically for this purpose. Aside from the morbid nature of the subject, it’s a rather attractively draw and crisp map of London’s extent and major natural features and networks, in the mid-1800s. Below (source) is a variant of the “famous” John Snow map produced in 1854, showing deaths by household, each as a black bar moving away from the street entrance to each house. Also shown is a shaded area indicating a disused burial pit suspected as a possible source, along with the pump that famously was the actual source vector for this...

From conference facility organisers PowWowNow comes this map/infographic showing the worst tube stations in central London for stress. They’ve produced a simple index of tube station stress by combining minutes of station-specific delays for tube trains, with the total numbers of people entering/exiting the station, and counting negative/mixed social media (mainly Twitter) posts. All three measures were counted across a full year and then combined to produce a stress index. The 15 highest scoring stations are mapped here. Acton Town (not on the map) actually scores worst in terms of tube train delay minutes, but this is more than mitigated by relatively fewer people using it (and tweeting negatively about it) so it doesn’t make the top 15. Stratford and Canary Wharf are the two non-Zone 1 stations that do. I’m a little surprised to see that Canada Water didn’t make it into the list, the interchange from there is the source of a lot of pain as it simply can’t deal with the numbers of people switching from the Overground to the Jubilee line, during the rush hour. The data comes from TfL Open Data (for the user counts), a TfL FOI request (for the delays) and use of a commercial sentiment analyser. The subtext to the map is presumably PowWowNow suggesting that maybe skipping the tube and staying at home or working in a different location would be a good idea. True – avoiding the centre of town in general is always a smart move for a stress-free journey. From a cartographical perspective, we rather like the use of the tube stations with faces at various levels of stress, and the yellow/red colour ramp – it starts “pretty bad” and only gets worse! (N.B. there are 16 faces on this top 15...

This lovely schematic diagram was first created in 1939 by George Dow. It shows the three LNER (London and North Eastern Railway) north London networks – radiating out from the Marylebone, King’s Cross, and Liverpool Street/Fenchurch Street London terminii, in a single map. Unusually, the map includes a series of pictograms, illustrating nearby facilities, leisure and tourist activities to each station. Dr Maxwell Roberts (of Tube Map Central) has recreated this map digitally, using a replica font, icons specially created by Doug Rose. It means we have a full digital vector representation of an 80-year-old map, allowing for reprints of the work at extremely high qualities and resolutions. He has also improved on the cartography of the original, making it a strict octolinear map (that is, straight lines meeting at right angles and 45 degrees only) like the more famous Tube map – the original had bent quite a few lines subtly to fit the detail in. The network itself has remained surprisingly intact over the last 80 years, with most of the lines still serving commuters daily. The most notable closures are the Buntingford line, and the Muswell Hill and Palace Gates branches near Wood Green. Several others have converted into London Underground lines – you can see parts of the modern Metropolitan, Northern and Central lines, and the DLR. There aren’t many Greyhound Racing, Speedway Racing or Ice Hockey facilities left, though. An obvious extension would be to adapt the map to reflect the modern north London suburban commuter rail network layout, and the change in facilities and attractions, while retaining the vintage look of the map. You can explore many other original maps of London’s transit networks, at Tube Map Central....

This attractive map of the housing and infrastructure history of Walthamstow and Leyton in north-east London has been created by Scott Davies. Scott used QGIS and OpenStreetMap data to create an attractive, vintage-style basemap and then shaded residential areas with different colours indicating when each block was developed. Older areas are shown in blues, while the shaded colour becomes yellower to show newer developments. CDRC Maps has mapped larger building blocks in a similar way from Valuation Office Agency data, however the resolution of the VOA data is quite low. This manually compiled map shows much more detail, including individual buildings in some areas. Scott used old Ordnance Survey maps, amongst other sources, to determine the antiquity of buildings – so once-isolated dwellings are discretely shown on the map even as more recent developments have surrounded them with newer housing. Dates written in red show the development of other major features in the area, such as the various reservoirs in Walthamstow Wetlands, the railways and Victoria Line, major roads, parks and cemeteries. The map is finished with an attractive set of adornments, including a lovely old-style title, compass rose, scale, overview map as an inset, and key. Scott used Inkscape to provide the artistic and cartographic finishing touches and elevate the work from a simple datamap to a work of art. The overall piece is a lovely bit of digital cartography that shows effectively and attractively the residential history of this London suburb. You can see Scott’s map on this tweet which links to a PDF of the map. Detail from “A Chronological Map of Walthamstow”, around the Wood Street/Forest Road...

Canary Wharf’s annual public light show is back – it closes this Saturday, so you have just three more evenings to get down to the Isle of Dogs after dark and see 21 illuminated artworks. There’s a special map produced each year to show where on the campus the exhibits are. We reviewed last year’s map, and for this year’s show, it’s been updated with locations and preview pics – here’s the official map as a PDF. The site is relatively compact and you can likely visit all 21 in a short walk by starting at Westferry Circus and heading eastwards, then anticlockwise and Jubilee Park, ending in the north at the Crossrail Place shopping centre/rooftop garden/future station, which has various food options. Or, if arriving by DLR, start at Heron Quays, go anticlockwise around to Crossrail Place, and then head westwards out to Westferry Circus to complete the tour. Winter Lights is a nice idea, it’s not ridiculously crowded like the London Lumiere was last year, so you can see the works without having to look over people’s shoulders, and get between places quite quickly. And it’s really nice to see a bespoke, attractive map being produced, rather than a collection pins on a Google Map or poorly designed smartphone app which seems to be more common for events like this. From the Canary Wharf...

The HERE Urban Mobility Index profiles 30 cities around the world, looking at how connected, sustainable, affordable and innovative they are, relating to urban mobility – the options that people have to move around the city area. London is one of the cities and scores first place for its public transport efficiency and low emission zone coverage, however its score is pushed down by its poor traffic flow (which is no surprise as it correlates inversely with public transport efficiency) and relatively expensive public transport fares (with respect to monthly incomes of its residents). As part of the dissemination of the urban mobility index results, HERE have produced a set of maps – the map at the top is a “placesetting” map for each city, showing the full public road network (with nice CSS colouring/animation), and the bottom map is a data map, showing the numbers of public transport vehicles (buses, trains, trams, metro) stopping at each stop or station throughout the city, on a typical weekday. There are several other data maps also included in the profile for each city, including coverage of mobility options regardless of frequency (London again scores well due to its dense network of bus-stops in particular), and areas of green space and low-emissions zones. The maps are good, cleanly presented maps of the pertinent data, they are a visually effective way of summarising London’s mobility, and allow an easy comparison with the 30+ other cities in the index. Explore the HERE Urban Mobility Index for London (and other...

It’s been a wet and drab December so far – so why not escape the gloom and get into the spirit of the season with the biggest Christmas market/funfair in London? Winter Wonderland, which occupies a huge space at the eastern end of Hyde Park, stretching almost from Marble Arch to Hyde Park Corner. The organisers have kindly produced a map, which you can see here. It is very much in the style of a theme park map, lots of bright colours and 3D representations of the rides. It certainly gives you a flavour of what is going in at Winter Wonderland, and illustrates just how big it is. Incidentally, the map doesn’t have a north arrow on it, which is particularly naughty as it is not aligned to the north. Instead, eastwards (towards Park Lane) is up. Overall though, we like the map – lots of snowy Christmas trees on a map of London! Your initial experience of Winter Wonderland will very much depend on which gate you enter from. If you love a snow-themed circus-style set of rides, then the entrances near Marble Arch, to the north, will get you right into the action. However, if you prefer a slightly more refined experience, with wooden Christmas market chalets, a Bavarian Village food court, an outdoor ice rink and a more traditional/less high-octane funfair, then head to the area from the Hyde Park Corner or Knightsbridge tube stations, to the south. Of course, you can walk right through the site from one to the other, but it does get very crowded at evenings/weekends, and the site is huge. Winter Wonderland is free to get in to (rides/experiences cost, of course) and all traders this year accept contactless payments. It’s open at 10am-10pm every...

The Little Globe Company is Loraine Rutt, a London-based cartographer and artist who specialises in maps created from clay, perhaps most famously crafting and hand-painting miniature porcelain globes in painstakingly precise detail. Her output is not just globe-based though, as this piece, showing London’s relief (hills and valleys) as well as its river network, both above and below ground (many of London’s smaller rivers are now hidden, often called the “lost rivers”. The relief is shown as stepped contours, allowing steeper gradients to stand out, and looks great particularly when viewed with a lightsource at an angle (simulating the sun) as can be seen below. The contours of Muswell Hill, in the northern part of the map, particularly stand out – any London cyclist will know them well. Newham in the east looks spectacularly flat, as does Heathrow Airport in the far west (as you would expect). As with the ceramic globes, the London’s Rivers piece has great attention to detail – the artist’s formal cartographic background ensuring that each work is geographically correct as well as looking fantastic. The artist has produced just 10 of these pieces. You’ll be able to see one of them at The Arches Studios at Peckham, at their Christmas open studio event this weekend (only). Thank you to Loraine Rutt for demonstrating her expertise at a special event, and The Map House for hosting her and an exhibition of her works. Photos © The Little Globe Co and from the website and Instragram...

This lovely map, hand-created by artist-cartographer Adam Dant, which was commissioned by the East End Trades Guild, is launched today at their Christmas takeover of Old Spitalfields Market – you’ll be able to pick up a free copy there. The map shows the locations of some of the more interesting traders and small businesses in the Tower Hamlets area and other parts of the East End, such as along Columbia Road. The map is an update of a similar map produced by Dant for EETG last year. The new one has a mainly black-and-white background, allowing the trader markers and a number of cartouches and other map embellishments to stand out. This post is Day 1 of the Mapping London advent calendar, where we’ll feature 24 of our favourite Mapping London maps from the last few years, including some new ones! Check our Twitter, Facebook or Instagram accounts each day between now and December 24 to see each day’s pick. Thanks to Carefully Sorted and the Hackney Business Network for the images used in this...

The Greater London Authority has published a data map, showing the locations within London where tree canopies can be seen from overhead. There are about as many trees as people in London, and 21% of the capital’s land area is covered by them. This is an impressive number – this must make London one of the greenest large areas in England. Some of the home countries have perhaps 25%+ tree coverage, but most other “rural” areas are dominated by farmland or moorland, rather than forest. You can see the map at https://maps.london.gov.uk/canopy-cover/. The data and methodology has also been published. The data was automatically detected from aerial imagery by machine learning. I do have my concerns about it – for example, this area to the left of the curved of the railway line is shown as forest on the map, but actually it is a grassy field: In some residential terraced areas, the back gardens also tend to be entirely full of tree canopies, which seems a little surprising – even if a single tree’s canopy will cover much of a typical small inner London garden, I can’t believe it would cover all of it. So it’s a good first analysis of London’s tree cover, but does need some refining. The main data source is imagery in various wavelengths from the SENTINEL satellite. An obvious additional datasource for refinement would be LIDAR (which is released as open data by the Environment Agency, often at sub-metre horizontal resolution), which can accurately detect height changes. Trees tend to have a characteristic canopy shape and variation (i.e. they are not completely flat) and also comparing LIDAR DTM and DEM heights should show, for example, a green field where the grass is 1 metre tall, is not a...

In celebration of the Christmas lights being switched on in Covent Garden this evening, we feature this lovely map of the precinct, which has been drawn by artist Adam Dant, for The Covent Gardener, a periodical that focuses on the landmarks, shops and residents and characters of London’s famous and bustling shopping and tourism heart, Covent Garden. The work appears in his recently published compendium, Maps of London & Beyond. The first version of the map appeared in a 2015 issue of the publication, and since then, Adam Dant has gradually added characters to the map, issue by issue. In the book, Adam writes that he was inspired by the time when breakfast cereals contained a random plastic figurine in each box, allowing the gradual build up of a collection like this. If you have ever visited Covent Garden, you will be familiar with at least some of the current-day characters represented – which coexist on the map with those from 300 or so years of history of the market. For example, the “dog man” (34) or the “Yoda” street performers (12), on the section leading from Covent Garden tube station to the central market building. Spot also the Moomins (22) who have a tiny shop inside the historic market building. The presence of the person dressed as a giant apple (14) marks the “Apple Festival” which is held in autumn each year to highlight and promote the UK’s apple harvesting season, she coincidently is located outside the building of the modern Apple Store: The map is distictively an Adam Dant work, with the soft watercolour brushstrokes, distinctive colour palette (dark greens predominate here) and intricate detailing of landmarks and people. The adjacent page reproduces the 52 characters in a line-up and provides detail...

Readers of Mapping London, and Londoners in general, will be very familiar with the striking straight lines of the Tube Map. But you probably won’t have seen this map before, which employs the same kind of schematisation to show London’s now completely vanished tram and trolleybus network (there is a tram in south London now, but it wasn’t around when this map was created). The map, while simplifying the corresponding road network to 45-degree angles – just like the tube map – includes many other details, such as tube stations, parks (with names), towns and suburbs. The River Thames is there of course, and is also subjected to the 45-degree rule. Road bridges across the river are shown and named, regardless of whether a tram or trolleybus crossed them. Some angles don’t work too well – Seven Sisters road for example, is shown as an extremely wiggly road here, whereas in actual life it’s very nearly a straight line – just one that travels at around 60 degrees from north, rather than multiples of 45. Because it inevitably connects with further trolleybus and tram routes along its length, the map has to stay fairly true to real-life. Hence the dizzying wiggles: As this map shows, lovely as it is, the simplicity of the tube map doesn’t translate very well to London’s complex road network. So perhaps this is why the idea almost didn’t survive for above-ground networks, and London’s more modern bus maps (now discontinued) have always used the actual geographical network. However, there is one modern successor map – the central London bus map for tourists (see the third example on this post). Another oddity is that the map is quite “purist” in terms of colour. It doesn’t colour-code the lines – they...