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...

Air pollution has long been a problem in London, and the current mayor has identified pollution as one of his major goals to highlight and tackle polluion, and improve the capital’s air quality during his time in charge. This map, of the modelled 2020 annual pollution levels of NO2, has been produced by Parallel, using the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory 2013 (LAEI) dataset that was published by the Greater London Authority in 2016 (they have since published a slightly updated version). The calculated data is presented as a raster (a grid of estimated pollution values) and Parallel have taken this and made it into an 3D webmap, so that you can “fly around” the map and see towers of pollution – and troughs of fresh, clean air: There’s something quite compelling this kind of presentation – it works well because this kind of pollution is dominated by, and generally restricted to, major roads. The 3D spikes therefore don’t obscure the rest of the map, as they are generally constrained to quite linear features. They act to both emphasise the significant and scary nature of pollution in some areas, and illustrate that, by walking or cycling through back streets rather than on main roads, your pollution intake can be significantly lowered. One striking element, on examining the map, is where elevated sections of road, such as the Hammersmith Flyover, the Westway and the bridges across the Thames, are pollution hotspots – the height meaning that the surrounding environment is further away and so can less effectively absorb the pollution: It’s not just cars, of course – some pollution shows along railway lines frequented diesel trains, while Heathrow Airport (see bottom image) also stands out – particularly the two runways, and specifically the points where aeroplanes...

Urban Rambles is a new book by Nicholas Rudd-Jones, featuring walks through many of England’s cities. The book comes with a 22 route maps, drawn by illustrator Sara Mulvanny (see her portfolio page for the book), including a couple in London, which we feature here. Above is the “London Inner Circle” which stretches from Hyde Park to the Olympic Park, and makes good use of the Regent’s Canal, Thames Path and the Royal Parks, to avoid road-walking in the centre of the capital whereever possible and form a complete loop. Having walked, cycled and even boated recently along the Regent’s Canal, I can confirm that it is a lovely route. Below is another London map in the book, Olympic Park to Tower Hill, which focuses on the eastern end of the above walk, the enlarged scale meaning that more cartouches and other cartographic niceties appear. The colour palette used for the maps is very pleasant – it reminds me a little of the Stamen Watercolour map, but, being hand-drawn, the textures are used discerningly, and don’t distract from the waypoint or route detail. Key landmarks are sketched, with dotted lines connecting them to their actual locations on the map. A number of other cartographic details, such as stars showing particularly scenic locations, trees showing the key green areas, and an attractive compass rose, finish off the map. Urban Rambles is available on Amazon or in all good...

Layers of London, which has just launched, aims to be a platform for geolocating and documenting the local history of the capital. It works by allowing historical facts, comments and memories to be attached to pins on a map. The pins are grouped together as projects, or collections. The map itself can be adjusted, from a standard basemap, to various historical maps of London, including the high-resolution Victorian Ordnance Survey maps of the capital that were scanned by the National Library of Scotland. An ongoing project is also stitching together and orthorectifying (georeferencing) aerial photographs taken by the RAF after the Second World War. This effort, being carried out by school pupils in a number of London schools, is gradually working across London from the east. It’s a great idea, and the project, financed by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a number of other match funders, has a big team on board to manage the project’s utilisation and evolution. The focus so far has been on building out a modern platform and it has only just started acquiring content, so the map is a little sparse in places. We hope that it is able to link up with a number of other projects that georeference old maps and images of London and allow user-generated historical content – such as Wikimapia, the LSE’s Booth Poverty map and accompanying historical notebooks, Mapping for Change,...

You’ve done the Circle Line Pub Crawl. Now try the Circle Line Food Crawl. Or use this special “Food Tube Map”, produced by Wren Kitchens (they write about it here), to visit unusual gastronomic experiences anywhere inside the Zone 1 area marked out by the Circle Line. The 25 restaurants and eateries included in this graphic are all known for doing something a little bit unusual with their food – from vegan burgers to ice cream nachos. The map is based on the well-known tube map, focusing on central London. Note that it doesn’t quite include the whole Zone 1 network – the (yellow) Circle Line is substituted by the (pink) Hammersmith & City line, along the northern side of the network. As Wren Kitchens say: Over the last year, we’ve seen eateries pushing the boundaries and adding innovative new twists to classic dishes and drinks – particularly in London. From Fried Horlicks Ice Cream to Matcha Freakshakes; the capital currently boasts an extensive array of eccentric food/drink trends and experiences – that are proving to be a BIG hit with foodie’s, avid Instagrammers, and those that are simply just curious (and want to understand what all the fuss is about!). It’s clear that there’s an appetite for such products, with many travelling far and wide to give these exciting delicacies a try – therefore, Wren Kitchens have created a fun new visual that maps out exactly where you can find the latest food crazes across Central London, in order to help you plan your route. Anyway, plenty to try if you want something a bit different from your meat and two vegetables this evening. Thanks to Wren Kitchens for the map and...

TfL is keen to get people travelling on the tube when it’s not so busy, and also beyond Zone 1. With this in mind, they’ve commissioned these line maps, in conjunction with Time Out magazine. Each line (except the Waterloo and City) gets one, with the most interesting sections of each line converted into a “wiggle” map, surrounded by various tube-accessible tourist attractions. There’s one for the London Overground too, although it doesn’t help unravel what connects to what on the line – mind you, the official London Overground map is a bit of a headache too. You can see all the maps on this TfL Flickr page. Each poster is coloured by its line, and generally includes the type of tube train that runs on that line, drawn somewhere on the map amongst the tourist attractions – a nice touch. There’s a lot of artistic licence applied to the drawings – for example, the dinosaurs above are serious sexed up compared to their concrete versions that do however indeed appear in Crystal Palace park. You should still go and see them though, if you never have! The line maps tend to not show stations that don’t have anything particularly interesting near them, and the outer ends of the longer lines are also generally missed out. However, the Victoria line (see below) has its full length shown, with things to do at every tube stop. I always knew the Victoria line was the best. The campaign launches officially on Friday so expect to see these posters appearing at various tube stations and in Time Out. Thanks to Diamond Geezer for the...

Tired of London? Samuel Johnson said you are then tired of life. But sometimes, there are attractions in living outside the capital, while continuing to work in the centre. Such as a nice big garden, and being away from the “urban heat island” that makes London hotter than the surrounding regions. To do that, you need to pick a good commuter town, and this tool, from TotallyMoney (who also produced a London house price/sqft map we featured a while back), aims to help you find that. It’s been freshly updated with 2018 data. Basically, there are four attributes – min/max travel time to a London terminus, season ticket cost, life satisfaction score (between 7 and 8 – ask people how happy they are with life, out of 10, they will generally say 7 or 8 on average) and house prices. The tool adds these values together, and ranks each of 115 towns. You can set min/max filters on each of the attributes, and the tool will then reorder the rank of towns that have values falling within your filters. A green/blue colour ramp is used to highlight the better places. Looking at all 115-odd places, Purfleet in Essex is No. 1. Cheap, quick commute in, happy people and good value (relatively speaking) house prices. The results are arranged on a pseudo-map of how the towns link to London via the rail network. It’s not quite right – it’s missing Cambridge to Liverpool Street, and Bedford to Luton for example, and is also missing a few towns, e.g. Marlow. Hertford and Ware are not connected to London correctly, and Cheshunt is also wrong. So don’t use it for journey planning, but it might give you some ideas on places, for sure. To see the actual...

London’s been sweltering under a heatwave for the last couple of weeks. Mapping London co-creator Dr James Cheshire has created this map from the latest (29 JUne) Landsat 8 thermal imagery of the capital. ExCeL is a particular hotspot – its large, flat, metallic roof was showing a temperature of 38°C, having been baked by the sun. The map uses a striking thermal colour ramp – ranging from hot to super-hot. Dr Cheshire’s advice – head to the parks to stay cool. Copyright Spatial Analysis/James...

This is a map of Hackney Borough, from the perspective of its old, wealthy houses, and the discovered and undiscovered treasures buried under them, from the days when Hackney was full of country estates, before the ready sources of water led to a boom in industry. It was drawn by Adam Dant, and is one of the maps featured in his book “Maps of London & Beyond” which was published last month and we reviewed. The map is also available as a fine art print from TAG Fine Arts. We really like the green and yellow colour palette – Hackney is a bustling, inner city borough, but this is a reminder of its more rural times, and its many parks that remain. The use of Kingsland Road as the defining geographical feature, showing it as the widest road, and a straight line (both which are true in real life too), is striking, particularly as it’s shown with a slant, rather than just being part of a grid. The little building sketches, complete with signpost style captions, also act to enhance the map, as do the individual house details. Other inscriptions reveal the heritage behind modern features of the borough. For example, London Fields was once known as Cat & Mutton Fields – a pub nearby retains the old name. Morning Lane was once known as Money Lane. I’m not sure of the reason behind the dinosaur on Hackney Marsh though… There is an exhibition showing large format versions of some of the maps in the book, and other works, at The Map House in Knightsbridge, running until 14 July. The Map House is just around the corner from Harrods and is open during normal working hours. The shop and gallery is worth an extended...

A lot of Londoners are currently focused on the World Cup in Russia at the moment, so Mapping London is taking a look eastwards, thanks to the latest boutique map created by productive cartographers Blue Crow Media. The map is essentially a Moscow version of their London Underground Architecture & Design Map and features the same basic concept of taking a complex metro network, mapping it geographically, and then including, on the reverse, a detailed guide to the most architecturally impressive parts of the underground system, complete with photos and descriptions. The map and guide are bilingual, in England and Russian. The central Moscow area has an inset map, where the metro is shown in the context of the street network. The map data comes from OpenStreetMap. The map is finished in a card wallet, with an “M” cut out of the front, allowing a sneak peak of the cartography within. Londoners are very proud of the London Underground’s efficiency (most of the time) and history, but are perhaps willing to accept that the Moscow Metro is even more ornate than their own, and this guide nicely encapsulates the opulence of Moscow’s mass transit. It is available from Blue Crow Media’s online store. Thanks to Blue Crow Media for the review...

Adam Dant has, for a long time, been sketching lovely maps of London history, culture and phenomena, often focusing in particular on the historic East End. Now, Batsford, an imprint of Pavilion Books, has produced this book, collating Dant’s existing wonderful maps (and debuting some new ones) in single place and adding background information. The book has been created in partnership with Spitalfields Life, a long-running local blog for the area, and is published today. The book is impressively large, each individual page being landscape A3 size. This format gives each map the space it needs on a single page, to allow the detail, often including hand-written annotations and depictions of individual people, houses, cartouches and other embellishments, to come out clearly. The paper is also uncoated, giving a slightly rough, traditional map feel. The overall production quality and presentation is excellent – always critical for a book containing so many graphic works – congratulations to Batsford for taking such care with the production, giving the maps the justice they deserve. There are nearly 50 maps in all, many of whom have only previously been available as fine art works. A lovely graphical contents page (actually run-in across several pages) provides a glimpse of each map, through a circle, for those wanting to pick and choose rather than read from cover to cover. The title hints that it’s not just London that has been drawn by Dant, and indeed near the end locations as diverse as Paris, Rome, Scotland’s Great Glen and Tunbridge Wells get the cartographic treatment too. But first and foremost this is a book capturing London. Themes stretch from slang to Shakespeare, riots to coffee houses and Hackney to Mayfair. Who knew there were so many wrecks in the Thames estuary,...

The Tube Map is a design classic – the straight lines, even spacing and lack of unnecessary above-ground detail has become a hall-mark of metro maps across the world, since it was first drawn by H.C. Beck in the 1930s. Today, the printed versions of London’s tube map include a specific acknowledgement of the creator of the concept, even as the map itself has greatly expanded with the addition of a many new services. However, there was a period of time, between the merging together of various rival networks in central London at the beginning of the 20th century, and the creation of the Beck tube map, when cartographers attempted to show the crowded and complex network in different, but geographically-focused, ways. This map, by E.G. Perman, and available in the David Rumsey Map Collection, was one of the last maps produced, of London’s tube network, before the Beck “revolution” of the 1930s. It was drawn in 1927 and issued the following year, and shows some network simplifications – the lines between stations are shown with simple, gentle curves, rather than capturing the actual wiggles of the network. Stations are shown as small filled diamonds for regular stations, and larger, hollow diamonds for larger ones – when these are overlaid, due to the different colours of the different lines, there is some indication of the connection. Interestingly, and surprisingly, the complex crossovers of the Northern Line, just south of Camden Town, are shown on the map. Connections with mainline rail are shown beside the relevant station with small curly lines, with the operator name written just below them in a smaller text. This being a 1920s map, the classic “flowery” touches are present, such as the sweeping serifs of the font, waves on the...

[Updated with additional technical detail – see below] Here’s a fascinating data map of ground deformation (subsidence, upswelling) in central London, based on data from 2011-2017 and recalibrated to show the average annual change – be it rising (blue = 2mm/year upwards) or sinking (red = 2mm/year downwards). The data was obtained from 150 remote sensing images captured by the TerraSAR-X satellite and other InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) sources. It was processed using at TRE ALTAMIRA in Milan, Italy, using a technique called Permanent Scatterer Interferometry. All sorts of interesting patterns appear from the map. The most obvious is the red line running across the middle – the Crossrail tunnels across central London. The project has likely resulted in the slight drop in levels seen, although extensive compensation grouting has aimed to minimise the changes. Other red lines show electrical ducting projects and other utilities/infrastructure projects. Conversely, a large blue area near the south edge of the map might be early premptive groundwork on the Northern line Underground extension to Battersea Power Station, and the extensive residential works at Battersea Power Station (which is right at river/sea level) and the Vauxhall area in general. The specific reason however is not known. The large red area to the east could be two projects – various residential and other construction around the O2 Arena in North Greenwich, and the various works on the north bank opposite – London City Island, Limmo Peninsula shaft for Crossrail tunnelling works, and general residential tower development at Canning Town. This area has the River Lea running through it with dramatic meanders. The dewatering of deep chalk aquifer here, necessary to stabilise the ground, has seen a significant drop. Also, crucially, there were no buildings here before, so ground level...

What do you do when you are a boutique retailer, with two showrooms that are both small and are a ten minute walk away from each other, with some interesting but confusing streets in between? If you are in a rush you just screenshot a Google Maps route and stick it on your website, so it’s refreshing to see deVOL, an upmarket kitchen retailer, has taken a different approach and has drawn and published a leaflet containing this map of their Clerkenwell neighbourhood, showing not only a route between the two showrooms, but also a selection of interesting things to visit in the local area. The map was drawn by Assistant Graphic Designer Mol Mathews, and a blog post on the deVOL website details the brief and the process. The map has a nice mix of hand-annotated places and regularly labelled streets, with four pastel shades added sparingly to give a bit of colour to the map, and the all-important route highlighted in red. The map is firmly grounded in realism, with pubs, dogs, pigeons and brollies showcasing the reality of London. 16 points are numbered, with an accompanying key detailing these “favourite spots”. In all, it’s a lovely homage to a lovely inner London neighbourhood. It’s a work of care and attention. You can pick up a free copy in either of their showrooms. Obtained from a deVOL showroom after Mapping London spotted a...