Central London has long been a spatial challenge for tourists and others unfamiliar with it. It’s very big, and most of it isn’t built on an easily understandable grid pattern. Quirks and kinks in streets built back in Roman times, persist to the modern day. The tube network is never far away from you when you are in “Zone 1” and offers a navigational relief but it’s always best to explore a city by walking with it. With this in mind, the “London all-on-one” pocket map, part of a series of UK city centre maps under the brand “Quickmap“, might be what you need. Claiming it is “London’s only tube, bus train, walk diagram” it certainly is bring something new to the table. Can it compete with the free “around this station” maps available at most tube stations, or Google Maps on your smartphone? Perhaps! The all-on-one map is in fact three maps – firstly a simple walking node-network map for Zone 1 itself (see picture below) on the back cover which has estimated walking times (e.g. Albert Hall to South Kensington 15 minutes), and secondly a detailed walking map for Zones 1 (+ Richmond, Hampstead and the Isle of Dogs) which highlights the main attractions but also traffic free streets and precincts, and very wide pavements, allowing the discerning tourist to develop a traffic-lite route around the centre of London and the other three classic tourist districts. But the value of the all-in-one map is the final map (see top picture), as it includes not only the full tube and train network for Zones 1 and 2 (and parts of Zone 3) but also a bus map too. TfL used to publish ultra-detailed bus maps allowing, on a single map, to see where...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Dry January? You might want to look away. From the industry’s official promoter of the fortified Andalusian wine in the UK, comes this map of tapas bars and restaurants in central London where you can be sure of finding a good glass of sherry. The map was published in October last year but we just spotted it now, and we like it! The map was created by illustrator Andy Smith. There’s lots of nice details in it – for example, the “Sherry Ferry” that appears in the Thames, heading towards Canary Wharf, is a reference to a ferry that used to go between two of the Camino bars in London. The plate of Mojama tuna is a nod to the animal that is, like sherry, local to Cadiz. Some tube station roundels and the River Thames appear – two musts with any London map – and the venues themselves are illustrated with numbered circles. A sprinkling of London landmarks are interspersed with names and logos of the bars/restaurants concerned, and various tapas-style snacks. N.B. Be careful if using this as a map to navigate by. The designer has gone beyond the usual bounds of simplifying detail and removing non-key roads, by connecting Farringdon Road and Borough High Street together across an unnamed bridge across the Thames. The former actually goes to Blackfriars Bridge and the latter to London Bridge, which are separated by several other bridges. This will be especially confusing if using the map to navigate after having tried several sherries. Use the London Sherry Trail map to find your venues, then your smartphone mapping platform of choice to work out how to actually get there! You may be able to pick up a paper copy of the map from the venues themeselves...

This rather nice diagrammatic map, created by by Premium Tours, looks at the top ranking on TripAdvisor for each cuisine type, for London, and then plots the restaurant concerned, in its approximate geographic location. Each restaurant is represented by a category icon, which varies according to the continent that the cuisine is based in. A few adornments are added – key parks, the River Thames and major London icons. A theoretical road network is also included, although you may want to consult Google Maps or OpenStreetMap to actually navigate to the restaurant concerned. Accompanying the map is an A-Z (well, W) list of the restaurants, with their street addresses. From Piebury Corner (TripAdvisor #1 Scottish restaurant in London) in Islington, to Peckham Bazaar (#1 Albanian), this map crosses culinary as well as geographical boundaries, and, perhaps most interestingly, shows that many of the top “theme” restaurants are not in Zone 1 touristville, but require a bit of urban exploration. We really like the colour palette used, the attractive adornments, and the fact that the map strips superfluous detail right down, making it a lot more interesting and engaging to read by focusing on the restaurants themselves. It really highlights the breadth of London restaurant choices, and that each major cuisine type is well represented right across the inner city. See a large version of the map here. Spotted via...

Songs of London Town replaces street names with song names. The pastel coloured, hand-drawn basemap is overlaid with hundreds of song titles, each arranged over the street that it references. It’s rather a clever idea and allows for the creation of your own song-narrated self-guided tour of each central London neighborhood you happen to be in. The map covers the centre of the capital as well as decent part of the inner city – see the full map pic at the bottom of this post. The reverse, or “B Side” of the map, contains further details on each song reference: You can find the map at Present Indicative. (If you like the style, also see Fictional London, which is also produced by Present Indicative, we we reviewed it recently.) Thanks to Present Indicative for a review...

Time Out London, in conjunction with official Harry Potter portal Pottermore, created this lovely map showing 18 places in central London that have featured in the Harry Potter books and films. From Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross station, to the Knight Bus crossing Lambeth Bridge, the map allows you to construct your own Harry Potter themed tour of the capital. Filming locations are marked with a purple logo while book locations are in brown. The places are overlaid on an attractive, muted map of central London streets, parks and the River Thames, the map being finished off with an attractive border and adornments that makes it so much more than just pins on a Google Map. If you are wondering why the Happy Potter studio tour (aka “Warner Bros Studio: The Making of Harry Potter”) is on this map, it’s not actually in central London, or indeed London at all, but is up near Watford, just beyond the suburbs of the city – trains from Euston Station will get you to Watford Junction in less than half an hour, followed by a shuttle bus that runs to the studios from there. The other key London-related Harry Potter attraction is the location of the West End play Harry Potter And The Cursed Child. This is at the brown No. 3 “Charing Cross Road” on the map. Both the play and the studio tour are very hard to get tickets for, you need to book a long way in advance. The best walk-in Harry Potter experience in London is without doubt Platform 93/4, where there is an embedded luggage trolley where you can pose for free for photographs, and a rather unusual shop right next door. See the full size map and detail here. Copyright...

We do like arty tube maps here at Mapping London and Travelzoo have obliged with this rather pretty map of 50 free things to do in this summer in London, attaching the attractions to tube stations, with the key elaborating on the station names and walking distance to the place of interest. With London’s size and diversity, such a graphic is always only going to show a small selection of things, but Travelzoo have tried to include a decent variety across the capital, from Highgate Cemetery in the north to the Horniman Museum in south London and deer-spotting in Richmond Park to the south-west. The map is not perfect to use as a tube map, nor indeed as a map of how to get from the tube station to the “thing”, but it’s a nice graphic to use as a starting point for planning a trip to London that doesn’t just involve the standard Tower of London + Buckingham Palace tourist circuit. In terms of the cartography, the map adopts the famous straight lines and angles of the official tube map, although the river gets a more natural treatment. The addition of some icon-type artwork to illustrate locations in the capital is also a nice touch. It’s not perfect – I could nitpick and say that Highgate Cemetery isn’t free (unless you look over the fence) or that the Routemaster bus is in the wrong place as you’ll need to go to Trafalgar Square and eastwards to see one in regular service these days, but that would be mean. Download the full map as a PDF from here. Map copyright...

As London swelters a heatwave, people in search of a cooling waterside stroll might notice that London doesn’t apparently have many rivers. There is of course the mighty River Thames, and a few others here and there visible. But there are many more that you don’t just come across – they are just hidden underground. The book London’s Hidden Rivers, which launches this week, is the third in a London waterways trilogy of water-themed books by David Fathers, following a guide to the Regent’s Canal and to the River Thames. Like the others in the series, the book is full of attractive maps showing the route of the rivers (here shown as pipes) and the nearest walking route (shown with red dots). It is also crammed full of interesting tidbits about the rivers themselves, and indications of their existence on the surface, such as nearby roads with appropriately watery names. Other landmarks that are positioned on or near the route of the culverted water channels are also mentioned, with attractive sketches showing them in context. There are twelve subterranean rivers featured – some are quite famous, such as the River Fleet (of Fleet Street fame) and River Tyburn, while some, like the River Neckinger (which drains the low-lying area around Bermondsey), or the River Peck (Peckham is named after it) are less well known. The visual contents page (with a map showing the position of all the rivers in the book) is rather wonderful. A Londoner, seeing the contents page, might suddenly realise they are probably closer to a river than they thought. The clear and attractive maps, and consistency and attractiveness of presentation make this a lovely book just to idly read through, or alternatively it is an ideal guide book to walk...

Londoners will be very familiar with the crowded London Underground services and their famous diagrammatic Tube Map, but might be less familiar with another public transport network – boats on the River Thames. Yes, you can commute to work by catamaran – as long as you live and work close to the river. London’s river services are underused, certainly compared to most other modes of transport in the metropolis, so you have a good chance of a seat, even at at the height of rush hour. Travelling with a view, and much faster than on buses through clogged up streets – what’s not to like? You can even use your Oyster card or contactless card to pay for the River Bus services (RB1-6) – these are the ones shown with solid lines on the map. Transport for London has produced the map we feature here (see larger version), as part of its London River Services booklet. There is also a simpler dedicated map, without the details on tourist attractions. We like the pseudo-tube-map styling, although it could of course be simplified even further, with the Thames just being shown as a straight line. The inclusion of isometric squares showing the major landmarks near each pier is a nice touch. TfL has never really decided whether its river services are for tourists or commuters, but this map should satisfy...

From British Gas comes this lovely map of a walking trail in central London, that highlights many of the streets and locations that are still lit by gas lamps in London – it may come as a surprise to many people, but there are many gas lamps still in the oldest parts of London, lit by a gas supply rather than electricity. British Gas may just be one of many UK fuel companies these days, but it retains a historic duty – a small but dedicated team at the company are in charge of maintaining and repairing the gas lamps. Londonist created a fascinating short video showing the team at work, last year. From the company themselves: There are 1,500 gas lamps left in London which British Gas’ team of five lamplighters look after. These historic lamps stretch from Richmond Bridge in the west to Bromley-by-Bow in the east. The oldest lamps are in Westminster Abbey and the newest lights up a popular retail store in Covent Garden. Many of the lamps survive from the Victorian era.   The earliest lamplighters lit each lamp by hand at dusk every night and extinguished them at dawn. The role of the lamplighter has evolved since then and now they can be found making their way around London on scooters.   When tending to the lamps the mechanisms have to be wound up and checked, the glass polished and the mantles replaced. They may also require repairs if damaged by a lorry or building work around them.   Iain Bell leads the team of lamplighters at British Gas. He says: “People love historical dramas which may be a reason why more and more people across the world have taken an interest in what we do. There are...

Tower Hamlets council, one of the 32 London borough councils, has produced this simple pictorial map as part of a consultation for “Tower Hamlets 2031”, setting the “local plan” for urban realm policy for the next 15 years. The map appears on various advertising panels throughout the borough at the moment, and also appears on their website. It is purely an illustrative graphic of the present day Tower Hamlets, with the consultation documents themselves containing many much more detailed (but less pretty) maps of current and planned designations. We really like the map being simple and attractive, it showcasing the many famous buildings in Tower Hamlets, both old (Tower of London, Chrisp Street Clock Tower) and new (East London Mosque, Canary Wharf) as well as highlighting the three city farms and other larger green spaces in the borough. It also shows the extensive canal network, basins and docks that are a key part of the borough’s fabric and the focus of its regeneration work. If every borough had a map like this then it would show just how interesting (almost) every borough in London is, rather than the traditional focus on the tourist hot-spots in Westminster, Camden and the...

These attractive hand-drawn maps have been produced for a pocket guide “London’s Canals & Rivers” published by the Canal & River Trust by illustrator and cartographer Bek Cruddace. They show the navigable waterways around London, including the Thames and Lea Rivers and the Regent’s and Grand Union canals. The maps are designed for walkers and cyclists using the towpaths beside the canals. The locations of the locks are marked, as are tube and railway stations, allowing a one-way walk to be planned. Insets show key sections where a specific route is needed: I really like the strong but not garish colours, the subtle textures applied to the parks and urban areas, the hand-drawn tube roundels, and the attractive fonts. The rounded corners of the water features and parks also act to smooth and soften the graphic. It all comes together to create a both attractive and useful map. Visit more of Bek’s creations, or her Etsy shop – with some more London cartographical artwork coming...

The Shard, London’s tallest building, has a viewing platform at the top, the The View from the Shard. To access the platform, you use two lifts, the first from the 1st to the 33rd floor and then a second lift from the 33rd to 68th floor. The viewing galleries are then on the 69th floor (inside) and 72nd floor (outside), above which the Shard continues to taper to the 87th floor. Transferring between the two lifts, visitors walk over a large map that covers the floor and walls of the sky lobby there. The Shard themselves describe the map as a “graffiti word map” but I would consider it a nicely designed typographic map, that is, a word-based respresentation of the capital. The location of the Shard itself is shown as a discrete red dot, the rest of the map being made of of main roads, the River Thames, and two hundred sentences, that “flow” through rather nicely through the gaps between the mapped roads. The map is arranged around a corner, and carries on up on the walls too, so forming a rather unconventional way of looking at London’s layout – rather like the viewpoint itself. Each sentence is a description of a well known local feature of the area, without naming the feature itself, so providing teasers for visitors waiting for the next lift. For example, “Where houses line up like a slices in a toast rack”, corresponds to the Toast Rack area of Wandsworth – I must confess I’d not heard of this one before! The River Thames itself remains on the floor part of the map and so provides the focal feature for the visitors to walk along to get to the next lift. The corner of the route corresponds...

For fans all all things concrete comes this map of London’s most famous Brutalist buildings. Created by Blue Crow Media (see also their craft beer and cycling maps, it is the first in a new series of map-based guides to London architecture, focusing on the modern 1950s/60s “raw” concrete-heavy designs by Le Corbusier and others of the post-war architectural phase. The map is presented attractively in a blue band which keeps it nicely folded. The font used for the map title and building captions is the classic Helvetica font, used most famously on the New York Subway signs, crops up in all kinds of modern design institutions and is entirely appropriate here. On the reverse of the map, once unfolded, there is a short section on each of the structures featured on the map, with a photo, address, designer, build date and listing info. Blue Crow Media have created a soothing, subdued background map of concrete greys, browns and pale blues, using OpenStreetMap data. They have eschewed road names, featuring instead tube and railway stations, denoted (perhaps controversially) by roundels, as the chief geographic landmarking for the map, along with park names. It’s a bold idea but works well here with the partially translucent red for the Brutalist building outlines standing out strongly. If the Barbican Estate is one of your favourite London places, then this is the map to get to further explore these striking, if divisive, buildings. Buy the map from the Blue Crow Media shop Thanks to Blue Crow Media for the review...

This “line” map of Camden’s cultural locations – museums, galleries and music venues – has been produced by Camden Council and appears alongside a “Legible London” map of the borough and surrounding areas. I like the concept of simplifying a normal 2D right down to a straight line (although the actual route itself does involve a number of turns that the map doesn’t hint at) to simplify and filter London’s dense network of attractions and places of interest into a straightforward narrative. Segment walking time indicators and tube stations help to break the line up into easy sections. The idea is simple and compelling, it is perhaps all you need to spend a day in London as a tourist (with the regular map to look at as a useful backup or for more detail). Each of the cultural locations are represented as a circle, the colour of the circle and inner symbol showing the location type. The use of straight lines and circles is reminiscent of a tube map, with the “stations” along the line (and branches off it) being the cultural attractions. The idea could easily be extended to cover over popular London tourist/cultural areas, such as along the South Bank/Bankside or through Strand/Fleet Street/the City. I spotted the map in the Wellcome Collection, one of the museums included along the line. It’s available from the front desk, as a sheet from a tear-off pad. The map is produced by the London Borough of Camden Creative Services/Arts and Tourism...

Londoners: The Board Game is a concept for a London-focused Risk-style game, currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter by “Stef and Ollie” (no relation!) We like this because the game is focused around a map of London. The definition of London for the game unusually uses the M25 “ring” as the border, which means Watford and Staines get included. It is also necessarily simplified, splitting London into six sectors radiating around the centre. There are also some topological quirks, but to complain about these would be missing the point – this is all about fitting London into a Risk-style conquest! We really like the bright colours used in the map – they correspond loosely to the tube lines dominant in each area (which is why, for example, the northern sector is black). It is also good to see the inclusion of the River Thames and the M25 as the key contextual features. As well as the main game, which involves missions for your character, such as buying up the football stadiums or the City, the area cards that will come with the board can make a mini “top trumps” style game. Trade cards on factors such as house prices and “coolness”. The team have already hit their funding target but are accepting overfunding – you can contribute in the next few days to secure your copy, your name on the board or other perks. If all goes well then it should be out in January next year. Crowdfunding page with more details on the project. Thanks to Stefan for letting us know about the...

London Landmarks is a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of a stylised map/view of central London, drawn by Maria Rabinky and produced by Gibsons, and is possibly the most fun map to have arrived the desk of Mapping London Towers for a very long time. Not content with reviewing the box and the individual pieces, we of course had to actually complete the jigsaw puzzle itself, which was achieved by 2-3 people, working fast over 3 two hour sessions earlier this week (so that’s around 12 hours of effort!). We were hoping that our geographical knowledge of central London streets and landmarks would be enough to allow an swift completion of the puzzle – many of the streets and features are named on the map, and there are very few similar coloured pieces – even the Thames helpfully shifts from dark blue to light blue as it heads eastwards – so we hoped this would be an easy puzzle. How wrong we were, as the “birds eye” view of London, looking roughly northeastwards from somewhere above Battersea park. The topology of the puzzle is pretty good – obviously many streets have been omitted for clarity, but buildings appear in the right location when you look at the finished puzzle, even if they don’t appear too when you are putting it together. The toughest building was the Houses of Parliament, as the project used makes it appear huge, and our final piece was the labyrinthine Royal Courts of Justice. Favourite building representations include Waterloo Station (which is represented by its famous four-sided meeting place clock) and London Zoo (which includes a veritable menagerie of animals in a single spot (note there is sadly no panda there in real life). When building the puzzle, we did the traditional...

This lovely map, drawn isometrically with individual building detail, was created by Oxford Cartographers for Southeastern Railway back in 2006 as a weekend/tourist map, which is why the full map (below) prominently features London Bridge, Waterloo East and Charing Cross stations, and highlights tourist attractions in the vicinity of these stations only. Ignoring these specific modifications, the underlying map is really very attractive. Although the map is 9 years old and London is an evolving city, it is probably still perfectly valid as a tourist map today. The map has a nice perspective trick – although the buildings appear to be in 3D, and the map appears to be a birds-eye view angled, from the south, it is drawn with slightly larger roads and smaller buildings than in real life, such that the building detail doesn’t obscure the road network, making it still very navigable. A high density of street names also helps with the navigation. Although this style of map is quite a traditional approach, and “Walkable Streets”-type maps, aka Legible London, are becoming quite fashionable now (Oxford Cartographers are also involved with these styles), there is still a certain charm in this kind of map which makes noisy, grimy central London look, well, rather pleasant. Frustratingly I couldn’t find anything on the web about this map so I’ve scanned it in and reproduced it in full below (low quality) with a higher resolution detail above. Copyright Oxford Cartographers...

Thought that the Shaun the Sheeps were the only London pop-up sculpture trail that you were getting this summer? Well the sheep may be gone now, but in their place there are 21 helix sculptures, each painted by a different artist, including celebrities Al Weiwei (on Brompton Road) or Zara Hadid (at Somerset House). This is the Cancer Research UK London Art Trail, or DNA Trail, and it precedes an auction of the sculptures which will raise funds for the Francis Crick Institute, has an accompanying map that we show here. The map is based on data from the OpenStreetMap project (alas uncredited) and uses a purple and pink colour palette, matching the theme of the trail’s commissioner, Cancer Research UK. The cartography is crisp and clear, containing the all-important tube station locations and River Thames that both act as London’s default landmarks. It has just enough detail to allow you to pinpoint the locations of the sculptures, which are spread fairly evenly between South Kensington and St Paul’s – a long afternoon’s stroll might get you them all then! Download the map (PDF) Thanks to the Cancer Research UK Press Office for letting us know about the trail. Map contains OpenStreetMap data which is Copyright OpenStreetMap contributors. Photo credit: Adrian...

London has some grand gardens, many open to the public, and often with a special map to help with their exploration. Here are some of the maps of London’s greatest public gardens. 1. Kew Gardens This attractive map (see top) gives a good view of Kew’s huge extent (especially as it includes a key) and makes good use of captions. The famous vistas in the gardens are included, although they are quite difficult to pick out. A more detailed map which revealed more about the plants of each area, would have be nice. 2. Kensington Gardens One of London’s Royal Parks, and ajoined to Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens is large, ornamental, and free to access. Much of it is more park-like than garden-like, although it does have some formal areas. Its map does a reasonable job of picking out key statues and other features of the gardens, as well as clearly showing public transport around the edges. Curiously it is not shown as a top-down map, but tilted, as if the view was looking from the air, to the south. Therefore, distances are a little harder to understand, and there is no key, apart from a “walking time” bar – which, due to the aforementioned tilt, would be different depending on the direction. Still, it is a pretty map and emphasises the lovely green oasis in central London: 3. The Gardens of the City of London The City is the square mile that lies right at the heart of the metropolis, and its council, the City of London Corporation, have produced this useful map of the many public green spaces throughout the area, many of which are popular lunchtime retreats for the 250000+ city worker who cram into the area. The map is not...

The London Thames Path is a brand new book by author/illustrator David Fathers. Like his previous book on the Regent’s Canal, it is an attractively illustrated narrative to walking alongside the water feature, with every double-page having a map, surrounded by pictures and information factoids about the current section. As such, it’s very pleasant to read even if you are not using it as a guide book. The Thames, being the defining geographical feature of London, is packed full of history and the book delivers this well, be it talking about historic monuments and houses alongside the river, to geographical quirks like the Prime Meridian and measurements of the lengths of all the bridges passed. The route is shown as a simple red dotted line, with staircase links and nearby tube/rail stations and piers marked. You could probably manage to walk the Thames Path without this book, but having a guide like this, carefully written by an author with a genuine interest in the route, makes the experience much more interesting. The guide has 127 pages and includes a summary map showing all the crossings on two pages, and a further double-page spread on the Thames Estuary, i.e. further downstream from the section of the Thames (Putney Bridge to the Thames Barrier) that the main guide concentrates on. Where the Thames Path runs on both sides of the river, both sides are included. The London Thames Path is published by Frances Lincoln Publishers and is released on 7 May. You can be among the first to get hold of this gem by ordering it from Amazon for shipping next week. Thanks to David Fathers for sending a review...

We’ve mentioned Google’s excellent aerial imagery and 3D building mapping for London before, but we’ve not featured the Google Maps app itself, mainly due to the antiquated smartphones that both editors have, which are just not quite up to it. However, thanks to a Lifehacker workshop organised by Huawei UK recently to highlight their shiny new Ascend G7 smartphone, Mapping London had an extended chance to try out the Google smartphone mapping apps – namely Google Maps and Google Earth – on their native Android platform and with a smartphone that can do the cool “zoom from outer space right to my street” party trick smoothly and seamlessly [glares at long suffering iPhone 4 sitting in the corner]. Google Maps is the closest that smartphones have to a “killer” app. You might think your phone is about making phone calls, listening to music or taking photos. But never before has it been so easy to navigate through a new city or an unfamiliar neighborhood to your nearest doughnut shop. Google Maps for Mobile is perhaps the map that is in the most number of pockets in the whole of London – likely even more so than the tube map. Millions will look at it every day. So it’s about time we featured it. And it probably looks different now, too. Google is continuing to refine Google Maps on mobile on a frequent basis, for example, some new features launched just last week, and tidying an interface that minimises the numbers of buttons to be pressed or words typed. What I like about the current iteration of Google Maps is its bold, crisp graphics. The cartography may not be beautiful – it is entirely auto-generated, but the map is clear and it is obvious which...

A fan of Shaun the Sheep? Well, you are going to be seeing plenty of him in the capital over the next couple of months. On Saturday, 50 fibreglass Shaun the Sheep statues will be placed in various locations in central London – for “Shaun in the City”. 45 of the 50 are featured on the main official map, an excerpt of which is above, the full version below (click the latter for a larger version). The map shows four trails of 3-5km where you can visit several in quick succession. Each statue is painted differently – from a solid gold-painted one in Canary Wharf, to one dressed as a beefeater. Above is part of the official map and there is also a full list of the designs. Some of the sheep, marked with a diamond, are indoors. In late May, the exhibition packs up and 70 more designs appear in Bristol, and then in the autumn they’ll all be back in Covent Garden for a weekend, to be auctioned off. If the concept sounds a little familiar, it follows on from Cow Parade, Elephant Parade, a set of kangaroos, Gromits (in Bristol), giant books and miniature Boris Buses, the last of which have just had their closing auction. We like the official map which we have excerpted here. It’s an attractive, green-tinted custom-made map from OpenStreetMap data, with vignettes of key tourist sites in central London, and largely clutter-free, with just the key streets and tube and railway stations named, as well as the walking routes and the sheep locations themselves. The cartographer/designer (Matthew Hitchcock for Shaun in the City) has taken care to curve names on wiggly streets, and add a watercolour effect to soften some of the lines. The maps is...

[Updated – Changed prices and links for 2016.] You’re in London for only 24 hours. You’ve never been here before. You want to see as many things as possible. What do you do? Hop on a tour bus! London has several “hop-on-hop-off” tour bus companies, plying set routes along London’s attraction-packed streets. A day ticket typically allows as many trips as you need along the route. Some of these companies have produced maps showing the routes they take. Here are just three of them – we’ve included the price for a turn-up-and-buy all-day ticket. 1. Big Bus Tours – £32 £26 (includes a free Thames cruise and walking tours.) Link to map. Big Bus has a 3D-effect map with the main tourist sites and some other buildings shown in miniature, parks (with trees) and a basic street network. It shows the two main tour routes, plus two link routes and the route of their Thames cruise too, along with numbered stops. To their credit, many attractions well off the tour are also included, such as the BT Tower and Lords Cricket Ground, as well as little characters shown crossing at “that” zebra crossing at Abbey Road), hospitals and, oddly, some residential construction sites. It’s a useful and attractive enough map for its purpose, spoilt only by the addition of blue circles which are meant to highlight particular attractions but end up duplicating them and somewhat cluttering the map. There are a couple of minor mistakes, e.g. Embankment is in the wrong place. But, considering, it’s really not too bad. Armed with this map and a free TfL tube map (available at any tube station), your average rushed tourist could probably get around London quite easily. 2. The Original Tour – £29 £30 (includes a...

The Legible London project has been producing clear, attractive maps of parts of London, to help people navigate unfamiliar streets by foot, for a few years now. The maps appear on numerous way-marking plinths around the capital, helping people to get from A to B effectively. During the Olympic Games in 2012, paper Legible London maps were made available at key stations, to encourage people to walk rather than overload the tube/train network, but generally, the maps are not available online. Recently, however, the project has created maps for several of London’s signed long-distance walks, and these are available for download. As an example I’ve picked Section 7 of the Jubilee Greenway, one of London’s long-distance paths that was put together for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, also celebrated in 2012. This particular path spends quite a lot of time on the Greenway (aka the Northern Outflow Sewer!) in east London, but also includes some more classically touristy sections. Section 7 is a nice balance between the industrial and touristy parts of London, going through the industrial/changing Deptford waterfront and residential Rotherhithe but also passing the Cutty Sark of Maritime Greenwich and Tower Bridge. Direct link to the PDF. The maps use a clear and consistent colour theme, with a relatively small number of colours resulting in attractive cartography. Only major buildings and landmarks are shown, in yellow, with a selection shown in 3D on some of the inset maps. The route is shown clearly, with a red line, and with links to stations, and diversions, as red dashes. You can download section maps for most of London’s long-distance paths, on a new part of the TfL website. Hat-tip to Diamond Geezer for spotting the new...

Covent Garden is one of London’s main traditional shopping precincts, with the Covent Garden Market building itself, once London’s main wholesale fruit and vegetable market, now full of boutique shops. The historic market building is in the heart of London’s “theatre-land”, and is bookended by a grand Apple Store and the Royal Opera House on one side, and the London Transport Museum on the other – the latter is itself a fantastic source of old London maps. Compared with Oxford Street or the Westfield malls, two of London’s other main shopping districts – it’s just as busy, but with the lack of large department stores or standard chain shops, it has quite a different feel. It’s rather pleasant in fact, as long as you don’t mind crowds and tourists! We’ve discovered the following three maps which are great for exploring both the Market environs and the wider Covent Garden area: 1. Urban Walkabout Map Urban Walkabout, who we’ve featured before with their Clerkenwell/Farringdon map, recently published their latest map, focused on Covent Garden (extract below). Like their other maps, it has a pastel style, and highlights many of the independent shops and businesses in the local area. 2. Silvermaze Map Derek Reed at Silvermaze produced this pleasant isometric 3D-effect map of the area several years ago (extract at top) – and have slowly extended it to cover a wider area – it now stretches from Marble Arch to Waterloo. The style of the buildings shown reminds me of the SimCity game. It’s a nice hybrid of modern, functional maps, and old-style maps with trees and boats drawn in. The streets are widened compared to reality, which aids clarity – so you have both a clear view of the building shapes, and of the street...

We’d thought we’d put together a list of our favourite London map gifts that are in the shops, as last year‘s list proved popular. 1. London: The Information Capital This brand new book by Mapping London co-editor James Cheshire, contains “100 maps and graphics that will change how you view the city” and it certainly is a book that sits at the intersection of London, mapping and data. It’s a book as much about data map design as it is about London, as it contains various innovative graphic techniques and map designs to show London’s data, old and new. From a time chart of activities of London’s police helicopter, through a colourful ribbon graphic of every census statistic across every part of London, to . We’ve featured a number of the graphics in previous posts too. The book’s RRP is £25 and it is currently selling like hot mince pies on Amazon and in various bookshops across London and beyond. (Full disclosure: I contributed a small number of the graphics in the book.) 2. Map of London’s Craft Breweries Craft breweries have bring springing up in all corners of London recently, as the capital has acquired a taste for chilled, hoppy local brews rather than the big chains. Blue Crow Media have produced this lovely poster showing all the locations of the breweries, many of which have tap rooms open at certain times, where you can try out the beers, fresh! It’s £12.50 in their online shop. One craft brewery we particularly like is the Hammerton Brewery in Islington. Their beer is nice, and as a bonus, they have maps of London on their bottle labels! 3. Nairn’s London There is a new reprinting of Nairn’s London, a 1966 classic, quirky guide to a...

Here’s a beautiful hand-drawn map by Camilla Charnock, who was commissioned to draw it for a new retail development at Sloane Square in west London. I am very enthusiastic about developers commissioning attractive and original maps to promote their developments, it’s so much nicer to see something unique as opposed to a simple online map or an edited Google Map – nothing wrong with these per se, but a bespoke map suggests a genuine passion in setting a new development in its place. This particular graphic appears on the construction hoarding for the project (Duke of York Square, by Cadogan Estates). We’ve previously featured a Camilla Charnock work before – Carte Blanc, a map of restaurants in an up-market chain. Like that piece, this map includes lots of attractive adornments – a dinosaur skeleton for the Natural History Museum, a Chelsea Pensioner and a dalmatian dog (below). The main streets are shown, along with tube stations. Trees and flowers further soften the map. The development itself, shown in a blown-up section, includes the various retail units in pastel colours with symbols for the shopping types, and a few further adornments. Note that, rather unusually, the map is orientated so that upwards is eastwards. Thanks to Camilla for carefully photographing her artwork, joining the pieces together and sending them...

This attractive fold-out map (extract above) is produced by Urban Walkabout. It is the fifth in a series of maps of London tourist areas that aim to feature a number of bars, restaurants, independent shops, attractions and other boutique local businesses, all within walking distance of each other. The maps are free and can be found in the receptions of hotels within their areas, and at visitor information centres. For example, the Clerkenwell map which we feature here is available at the reception of the Zetter Hotel (which was the launch venue for the map itself). We like the cartography on the map – a pleasing, pastel colour palette has been used. Just the right amount of detail is included, to help you navigate the streets in the local area without overburdening with information. Large streets are written in capitals and given a subtle colour highlight, with smaller streets in lower case. Key bus routes (as lines of dots) and tube stations in the area are included. The businesses themselves appear as pastel blobs, for example The Quality Chop House, a Clerkenwell institution near Exmouth Market, appears as a light blue blob (No. 20). Parks are named and pedestrian roads highlighted. The map folds down to A6 so is ideal for a wander. The listing section includes a short description and opening hours. There are also five suggested walking tour descriptions on the map – for example, No. 5 is a pub breakfast at a Smithfield pub (they open early due to the times of the famous and eponymous meat market there.) The guide shows great attention to detail and is a great example of a business engaging other businesses to create a useful product, one that presents a fresh look at an area...

Mapping London is on holiday in New York City this week. In the centre of Manhattan lies one of the world’s most iconic parks, Central Park. It’s a hugely popular place for people to walk, cycle or run. With the latter group in mind, the Central Park Conservancy have produced this attractive map of running routes using the park roads that meander through the 400+ acres of greenery. You can run elsewhere of course but the park roads have dedicated running lanes (as well as slow and fast cycle lanes) and they are hugely popular with the jogging community. The map shows eight running loops, from a short (2km) hilly loop in the north end, to a grand circuit of the whole park, which is almost 10km. Multiple coloured lines are used to show each route clearly and simply. The complex network of other paths in the park are shown in white and, crucially in the summer heat and humidity of New York City, the many drinking fountains in the park are shown with blue dots. The extract above shows just the northern tip of the huge park. You can view the full map here. On a related note, there is also an (old) orienteering map of Central Park. Few orienteering events happen in the park as getting permissions to run on the “terrain” parts of the park are, presumably, very tricky. However there is a permanent orienteering course in the park, and a version of the map has been produced, showing it. Mapping London is back in its eponymous city next...

Mapping London is currently abroad on holiday. So here’s a post on location – not of a map of London, but of New York City. More specifically, a map of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, one of the five boroughs of the city. Green-Wood covers a considerable part of Brooklyn, it is nearly as large as the famous Central Park, across the river in Manhattan. It is 176 years old and designated as a National Historic Landmark, and although it doesn’t have “world famous” people buried in it, such as Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery in London, it does have, amongst its 560000+ buried, a number of people of significant note, who are detailed on the free cemetery map that you are handed at the main entrance. One of these people is Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph and the eponymous code. It is by far the the largest cemetery your author has ever visited, much larger than any of the “Magnificant Seven” Victorian cemeteries in London, and its road and path layout is fantastically detailed, as can be seen on the extract of the official map here (PDF here). It should be noted that the map is orientated so that south-east is up. There are some fine views over to downtown Manhattan, from some of the hilltops in the north-west part of the area – the climb up Battle Hill (named after a battle in Brooklyn, part of the American War of Independence) is close to the entrance and a good start to a visit here. It is a working cemetery, with new burials happening, and various unfilled plots in some sections. The cemetery includes a chapel that is closely modelled on the Tom Tower in Oxford, and is a short distance from the...

Google yesterday released their 3D map for much of inner city London – roughly, most of Zones 1-2 and parts of Zone 3, now visible in Google Earth and on Google Maps (when you zoom right in.) They’ve had individual prominent buildings for a while, and much of the centre of London was also blanket-covered in 3D maps, but now a much larger area is covered. There have been other 3D maps of London before – from Bing and Apple – but Google has taken time to produce a very impressive map where even individual trees look like – well, trees in 3D. Here’s the newly extended King’s Cross station building in all its glory. The Google UK headquarters will, in a few years, be just to the left. What I particuarly like about this 3D representation is that the delicately curved building has been modelled well – at a glance, it looks like the model itself is using proper curves. Here’s the pseudo-gothic Cruciform building, part of University College London. Check out all those turrets. Finally, here’s the Regent’s Park Mosque. To access the view in Google Maps, click the “Earth” button on the bottom left, then click the tilt button below the compass on the right, to access the 3D view. CASA colleague Robin Edwards has blogged the update in more detail. Imagery Copyright 2014...

Blue Crow Media, who have previously produced pocket-size maps, that we’ve reviewed, of artisan coffee houses, craft beer pubs and independent bicycle shops, have been keeping busy with their cartographical delights of London. Their latest creation is this rather attractive poster, showing the locations of the craft breweries that now pepper Inner London’s cooler neighbourhoods, stretching from Wimbledon to Woodford Green and including some of my favourites – London Fields, who produce their crisp lagers underneath the railway arches of the Liverpool Street to Cambridge line, Crate in Hackney Wick, who are very much a bar as well as brewery, and Beavertown, considered by some to produce the purest craft beers, who have just moved to Tottenham Hale and are opening up a Tap Bar there on Saturdays, from next month. The map is right up to date, featuring several breweries that have opened up only a few months ago. Blue Crow Media have been refining their cartography, style and colours for this latest poster. The map is not dominated by the pins, but they are prominent enough to draw the eye where needed. The colours used for the London landscape are pleasing to the eye – brown earth, green parks, a light blue Thames, cream roads and brown buildings. It works well both as a map and as a poster print for the wall of any craft beer enthusiast. You can buy the poster at the Blue Crow Media store. Thanks for Blue Crow Media for sending through a review copy. The map is produced in conjunction with Desk...

It’s a lovely sunny day in London today, with temperatures up to the mid-20s, and what better way to spend a day like this (assuming you are not working!) than in one of London’s theme parks. Not only are they fun places to be when the sun is shining, but your ticket tends to come with a quirky “gate map” which is a world a way from the style of most of the maps featured on Mapping London thus far. We’ve found four “theme park” maps for you: 1. Technically we only have one theme park in London – Chessington World of Adventures. Thankfully, it delivers in style on the map front, with a map that definitely makes you think more “tropical jungle” and less “tube lines”. The map was created by illustrator Rod Hunt. Update – here’s the 2017 version, which is a little more restrained but still fun. 2. Thorpe Park is second only to Alton Towers (way up north) in terms of the number of rollercoasters and rides, it’s not quite in London but is within the M25 so that counts. For 2014, Thorpe Park has scrapped its traditional “magical wonderland” style gate map, like is still seen at Chessington. Instead, they’ve realised that roller coasters are what Thorpe Park is all about, and produced a map that dramatically focuses on them. The map includes stats on each coaster, such as track length. This map was created by Visual Maps in Denmark. Here’s the 2017 one which is darker but otherwise very similar. 3. It’s not a theme park, rather it’s a train line… from London to Brighton. Southern Railway commissioned this isometric theme park style map to promote recreational trips on their line down to the coast. It shows the...

We were sent this lovely looking bespoke map by Adam Groffman, who runs regular eating tours in East London. Participants receive a paper copy of the map at the beginning of their tour, before sampling the cultural and culinary infusion of the area. Getting a map like this is a nice souvenir of an evening and no doubt enhances the experience (and whets the appetite). It certainly beats dots or circles placed on top of a Google Map screenshot or another generic base map. We really like the map as both a navigational piece and great example of cartography. It has the right balance of simplicity and detail – drawing out the venues while providing just enough other contextual detail, such as the main roads and stations, without crowding out the main work. The whimsical details are also rather nice – particularly the assortment of zoo animals heading out on the railway line towards Essex. The map was created by Simone Capano who’s also drawn a similar map for Rome. See also the Carte Blanc map which was produced last year, by a different author but with a related...

Over half a million cycle journeys now take place in London every day, and a whole service industry has grown in the capital, to cater for this population. This map is produced by Blue Crow Media and is designed like their maps of the best craft beer pubs and coffee houses. It focuses on the locations of bike shops, repair workshops, cycle friendly cafes (such as the famous “look mum no hands”) and other cycle-related locations such as the about-to-reopen Velodrome in the Olympic Park. It also shows the network of cycle routes (mainly road-based) in the centre of the city, both local routes and the “Cycle Superhighways”. The background map is based on OpenStreetMap data. One thing to note is that the routes are not always up to date or complete – such is the constantly changing nature of London’s cycle infrastructure and road network – but the map still gives a good idea of many of the key cycling routes. The extract above shows a popular and key cycle route between the City/Silicon Roundabout and cycle-loving Hackney. The cartography is crisp and easy to read, and best of all the map folds right down, so that it is genuinely pocket sized. The map is available at the Blue Crow Media shop for the bargain price of £3. Thanks to Blue Crow Media for sending a review...

This pocket-sized colourful map, illustrated by Robert Littleford, specialises in highlighting interesting things for young explorers of the metropolis. There is a good mixture of tourist attractions, famous buildings and reference points (tube stations and main roads) and lots of nice little illustrations of Lodnon buses, taxis, shoppers, footballers, etc, which makes the map interesting to look at even if not using it to navigate. You can find it at Adventure Walks Books or on Amazon. An ideal Christmas stocking present for junior map enthusiasts, or as a Secret Santa gift. Thanks to the publisher Francis Lincoln for sending us a...

London’s craft beer and microbrewery scene is burgeoning, and trendy independent coffee shops are also popping up everywhere, so what better way to encapsulate this than produce a map. Blue Crow Media, who produce the “London’s Best Coffee” and “Craft Beer London” mobile phone apps, have created two pocket-size maps of central London, showing key beer and coffee locations. The underlying maps use a muted colour palette and are based on OpenStreetMap data. The relevant pubs or coffee houses are then overlaid on the top. The maps fold out to approx 40cm x 25cm, and are double sided. By necessity they cover only the centre of the city, although the corners list and point to numerous other recommended establishments that are further away – sometimes more than are actually shown on the map itself. Nearest stations are included too. The coffee map is presented at a slightly larger scale. Unfortunately there is no scale on the maps but I think each side covers around 2km across and a bit over 1km from top to bottom. On showing the maps to some others in the lab here, people were impressed with the inclusion of some of their favourite places, and liked the clear, undistracting cartography. It’s a simple concept and nicely executed. You can buy the maps directly from the publisher, at the Blue Crow Media shop. N.B. The photos here are both of the coffee map. The craft beer one is very similar, except of course for the venues chosen. Thanks to Derek at Blue Crow Media for sending these in to Mapping London...

London dissected is the latest brilliant edition of the Curiocity maps series. For the princely sum of £2.50 you can purchase this gory interpretation of the capital then read it on the Tube, as I did, to enjoy the slightly nervous looks of fellow passengers who were clearly a bit unsure of my chosen literature. The map is brilliantly illustrated by  Nicole Mollett and packed with interesting things to do in the often over-looked parts of the capital. Think of it as Body Worlds meets Time...

As a followup to last week’s post about university campus maps in London, my attention was drawn to the Middlesex University campus map which I had overlooked. This was unfortunate, as it is far and away the best London university campus map I’ve seen. It’s in 2D, and uses a little bit of 3D to emphasise the key building, without overusing the effect. It ticks all the boxes for good design – particularly, it’s a good use of a select set of colours, which don’t overwhelm the map, Arrows discretely show access points, the main one shown with a slightly larger arrow. Trees are shown as an attractive blend of translucent circles. The symbols are well thought out, and include the “official” tube, train and cycle logos. Extract of the map which is “Redrawn from Ordnance Survey with permission of HMSO © Crown Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. London Borough of Barnet 100017674. Cartography by Steer Davies Gleave...

[Update – additional article on Middlesex University] I was talking to the UCL cartographer recently and he mentioned that there aren’t many dedicated cartographers left at universities these days. A traditional task of the university cartographer is putting the campus map together, so I thought I would take a look at the different campus maps that the London universities make available, to see how they compare and whether some are suffering from the lack of professional cartographical input. I focused on the “print” versions here, typically available on each university’s website as a downloadable PDF, rather the online/interactive version which is often Google Maps-based. I looked at the map for each university’s main campus, and only picked some of the larger universities in London – there are many more, scattered throughout the metropolis. Five of the best Greenwich As befitting the university with the largest undergraduate population in London, Greenwich’s has had some care taken with its design – it’s polished and very attractive. It is in 3D, which is normally bad, but it is spaced out and simplified enough for the effect to work. Long labels are generally kept off the map and in the key. UEL UEL’s map is rather eye-catching. It’s pleasant to look at and there’s some nice quirks, such as a rowing boat on the water. The DLR station and bus stop logos are very definitely unofficial though! (N.B. north points down). UCL UCL’s (above) has a distinctive design with good use of colour. It looks great in print, although unfortunately the PDF version is a raster rather than a vector. It does have a slightly overwhelming number of labels though – with the heavy font further emphasising them. Disclaimer: The author works at UCL. Imperial Imperial’s is also...

A book, by author and illustrator David Fathers, has recently been published, on the Regent’s Canal. It’s an engaging little book, part route finder, part local history guide, that documents curiosities about the canal (plus its nearby canal links) as it runs between Paddington in London’s west end and Limehouse in the east end, where it meets the Thames. Having cycled along the canal for the last few years on my commute to work, I was interested to read about the various curious objects that I pass every day. There’s just the right amount of information about each thing, and it really brings to life the history and utility of the lands immediately surrounding the canal. The book is right up to date, incorporating the Olympic Park into its outline map, as well as new attractions on the route such as the Towpath Cafe in Kingsland. Its publication coincides with the 200th anniversary, this month, of the first cutting of the canal. What really brings the book to life – and why the editors here at Mapping London are excited about it – is that every page has a lovely hand-sketched colour map showing the towpath along the canal and the surrounding scenery. The extract above shows the page where the canal passes along the western edge of Victoria Park in east London. The maps are both attractive to look at and clear to interpret. Locks, bridges and road links are are shown, with great attention to detail. You can see more information about the book on the author’s website and buy it on Amazon. Thanks to David Fathers and the publisher (Frances Lincoln Ltd) for sending a review...

Silky Map is a bespoke map of central London, printed on a soft cleaning cloth, the kind you would use for cleaning your iPhone screen or camera lens. As such, there’s a good chance you’ll be keeping it in your camera bag or wallet, and therefore it’s potentially a London map that you will always have handy. Because of the material it’s printed on, if you scrunch up the map and then lay it out flat again, it doesn’t get creased, but returns to its mint condition. This is a much better result than the Crumpled Map which remained resolutely crumpled even when it was unravelled. The cloth has a map on both sides – one with the City area and an extract of Docklands, and the other showing the West End and an extract of Hampstead. The cartography of the map is quite lively – it’s not the prettiest we’ve seen, but the medium of a cleaning cloth requires a map which is relatively simple and vivid in design. The map is designed with tourists in mind, with attractions pointed out, significant landmarks shown as silhouettes, and interesting and attractive streets and areas highlighted in yellow. The tube network is highlighted prominently. The map almost fully up to date – showing the Shard, although not the Circle Line extension to Hammersmith. There are a couple of mistakes – the DLR network dequence in the Docklands extract has a couple of stations out of order, and few of the other stations are a block away from where they actually are – but nothing too major. You can find out more about Silky Map on the creator’s website. Thanks to Gintare for sending us a Silky Map! Our computer monitors are now dust...

This map is produced by The Green Traveller in collaboration with Visit England and the Green Tourism Business Scheme, and presents an idyllic view of London – where its parks are the most prominent features. Roads are shown as narrow lines, red London buses and Barclays Cycle Hire bikes adorn the streets, there is not a car or taxi (or white van) in sight. There’s even a (possibly relocated due to the Olympics) swan on the Serpentine. A welcome step away from the concrete and tarmac, cycle-baiting reality. The map’s pins highlight a number of commercial organisations (hotels, restaurants etc) with a green persuasion – the accompanying text for each details their eco-credentials. You can download the map here. The extract is from the map which contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2010. The map itself was produced in early...

Next time you are passing through a station keep an eye out for a “London Summer 2012” map. It is a similar style to the “Why not Walk it Maps?”  we featured previously, but covers most of central London and all the Olympic Park. The maps feature key landmarks, the locations of Olympics related events (such as London Live) and shops, a selection of interesting museums and also more practical information such as public amenities, police stations and NHS walk in centres. The maps also include 6 discovery trails (round trips) to help explore different areas (such as the City; Spitalfields and Brick Lane; Regent’s Park; and the West End). Transport is also well covered and includes bus routes alongside points of interest to hopefully encourage people to stay above ground (no information on Barclays bikes though*). Being a map-lover these could be the best (free!) Olympics souvenir I have spotted so far and I expect they will be a useful momento for Londoner’s and visitors alike. *The cynic in me thinks this may be because Barclays aren’t an official...

Thanks to the Chairman of CASA, Prof Michael Batty, for tipping me off about this map of Olympic Venues in London, created by Katherine Baxter and Steven Potter of LondonTown. Above is just a small extract from the map. This is another in a good series of infographic maps that LondonTown has produced recently – a previous one included a rather nice map of the Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the Thames. I like the isometric projection and hand-drawn feel of the map. Venues are shown in indicative locations rather than being geographically correct, as the details of London between the venues are missed out. This makes it a very poor map for navigating around London between the venues, but a good graphic illustrating just how many venues in London there are, and how they relate geographically to the major London landmarks. There is a zoomable, slippy version here, and also versions in 10 other languages...

Mike Hall, illustrator and designer, has been painstakingly creating large poster maps of each of the London boroughs, largely by hand. Each map has a different design and theme, drawing on the most famous aspects of the borough. He’s drawn eight boroughs so far and promises more are on the way. Above is the part of the Tower Hamlets map, you can see a thumbnail of the full map below. I like the hand-written street names and that Mike has been careful to keep the map uncluttered by omitting the smaller lanes and alleyways where there is a lack of space. The green spaces are wonderfully illustrated with individual trees being tiled to indicate forested areas. Prominent buildings are shown in isometrically. Every part of the borough has had the same care and attention afforded to it. The maps are available from purchase from his online shop. Thanks to Mike Hall for supplying the imagery & I look forward to my own borough being...

TfL have produced a nice range of maps to promote walking instead of public transport (especially during the Olympics).  The maps use different cartography to the other walking maps TfL have produced,  and feature a nice range of pseudo-3D buildings and key landmarks. There are also 4 concentric circles that give an approximate walking time up to 25 minutes away. These have been centred over the “hotspot station” the map was produced for- in this case Fenchurch Street. The maps were being handed out to hardened city commuters who I expect do most of their onward journey by foot anyway. Hopefully TfL will continue to distribute these maps right up to and throughout the games. I can’t seem to find an online version of these so keep an eye out for them at your local “hotspot” station (of which there are...

This is the Crumpled City Map of London. Part of a series, including New York, Paris and Rome, and produced by an Italian company, the unique feature of the map is that it’s printed on a flexible tear-proof plastic sheet, allowing the map to be crumpled up into a ball for easy storage in a bag (or the little pouch that it’s supplied with) rather than needing to fold it up elaborately, as with most paper maps. The data for the map is based on OpenStreetMap. The publisher has added their own points of interest onto the top. When I reviewed an earlier version of the map in January, there were quite a few spelling mistakes and other curiosities which suggested a lack of familiarity with the city. However, I was delighted to spot with this latest edition (1.3) that most of these have now been corrected. Russell Square now appears correctly, as does Paddington. The map’s cartography is still clear and uncluttered, but quite simple. It makes no distinction between roads and paths, or roads and bridges – and tunnels (including underground railways) don’t appear at all. Therefore, it is more useful to someone walking around the city, rather than cycling or using public transport. Still, it is nice to see an OpenStreetMap map in a physical form, and on such a material that it is likely to survive being chucked in a bag and generally mistreated, so it is probably ideal for a walking visitor to the capital. The map can be bought on...

Google has updated the aerial photography available in Google Maps, for London. The new imagery appears to be from late summer 2010, showing the current crop of skyscrapers being built in and around the City of London, as well as other major new construction sites like the London 2012 Olympic Park. The previous imagery, in this part of London at least, was from pre-2007, before the Olympic site started to be cleared for the building of the games stadia. The quality of the imagery is excellent – sharper and less murky than the previous imagery. While Google Maps themselves continue to feature islands of grey between the networks of roads, their aerial imagery shows a richness of detail. The photo above is of Bloomsbury, with the glass-covered Great Court of the British Museum standing out, and a plane flying over Russell Square just to its north. Imagery copyright 2011 Google, Digital Globe, Infoterra Ltd, Bluesky, GeoEye, Getmapping and/or the GeoInformation...