Dating maps

This section is not specific to Essex maps, but rather applies to all UK antique maps.

Whilst most county maps were included within Atlases that had dates on them - on their frontispieces if not on every map - maps published as individual counties or areas within covers frequently have no obvious date on them. The exception is the Ordnance Survey, who always dated their maps as far as I have seen, sometimes with a plethora of revision dates, so they are always easy to date (unless someone has cropped off the margins too closely).

For the remaining publishers who omitted dates, sometimes they did include a date code that can be translated into a year, or at other times all you have is their address to compare against their known address dates. There is a lot of information on Bartholomews (click on the link), but rather less on the others (shown below the list):

Bacon & Co

Addresses:
1862-67     48 Paternoster Row
1866           73 Pentonville Road
1868         337 Strand
1870-1919 127 Strand
1919-22     Norwich Street, London

Business:
Bacon & Co took over the business of James Wyld in 1893.
Taken from British Map Engravers, Worms & Baynton-Williams

GF Cruchley

Addresses:
1823-24   349 Oxford Street
1824-33     38 Ludgate Street
1830-76     81 Fleet Street
1877 Some plates acquired by Gall & Inglis
Taken from British Map Engravers, Worms & Baynton-Williams

Gall & Inglis

Addresses:
1808-10   Old Assembly Close, Edinburgh
1811-15   259 Cowgate, Edinburgh
1816-18   Kincaid's Court, Cowgate, Edinburgh
1819-28   Nidry Street, Edinburgh
1820-21   165 Cowgate, Edinburgh
1822-24   28 Nidry Street, Edinburgh
1824-41   24 Nidry Street, Edinburgh
. . 1831-35   22 Nidry Street as well
. . 1841     15 North Bridge as well
1842-57   22 Nidry Street & 38 North Bridge, Edinburgh
1857-78   6 & 13 George Street, Edinburgh
. . 1872-74   30 Paternoster Row, London, as well
. . 1875   25 Paternoster Square, London, as well
. . 1909   31 Henrietta Street, London, as well
1878   20 Bernard Terrace, Edinburgh
1924   12 Newington Road, Edinburgh

Trading names:
1808-10 Turnball & Gall
1823-24 Hay, Gall & Co
1841-47 James Gall & Son
1847-48 James Gall & Co
1849- Gall & Inglis
Taken from British Map Engravers, Worms & Baynton-Williams, and IMCOS Journal Issue 73, Summer 1998

Geographia

Many maps use the Cumberland code, where the numbers 1 to 0 are represented by their position in the word CUMBERLAND:
C U M B E R L A N D   (or alphabetically)   A B C D E L M N R U
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0                         8 4 1 0 5 7 3 9 6 2

The M.YY (or MM.YY) code in very small print is generally somewhere on the map or in the index of places (eg CD.BR is October 1946); there is no consistent location.

From 1923 to sometime in 1925 it was Geographia (1923) Ltd.

Founded in 1911, it has had at least 5 addresses:
1911 . . . . . . . . . . 33 Strand
1915 . . . . . . . . . . 55 Fleet Street
1941/2 (?) . . . . . . 68 Fleet Street - temporarily?
1942 (or earlier) . 167 Fleet Street
1964 (or earlier) . 114 Fleet Street
1987 . . . . . . . . . . absorbed by Collins Bartholomew.

Geographers' Map Co

Geographers' also used an alphabet code:
A B C D E F G H I J
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

As with Geographia, the code then takes a MM.YY form (eg JA.GE is October 1946), usually placed in the bottom left of the map itself.

It has had at least 3 addresses:
1939 (or earlier) . . 24/27 High Holborn
1956 (or earlier) . . 28 Gray's Inn Road
1962 . . . . . . . Vestry Road, Sevenoaks

In 1972 it became the Geographer's A-Z Map Co Ltd.

J&C Walker

The county maps are mainly seen as flat sheets taken from their work "This British Atlas", but are also available folded in a rigid cover entitled "Walkers' [County]". Some maps are printed with a date along the bottom centre, but only about half of them; there are no dating codes used.

The major change on the maps is the extent of railways portrayed, which varies enormously as the maps move from the 1830s to 1880s (?). The date printed on the map refers to the underlying map and not to that of the railways, which were generally added in manuscript in red at some stage between the map printing and the sale of the copy; the dates on the maps and the extent of railways do not have a linear correlation, as some maps with earlier dates have more railways than maps with later dates.

They had several offices:
1827-30 . . 1 Spur Street, Leicester Square
1830-36 . . 47 Bernard St, Russel Sq (home 1824-51)
1836-37 . . 3 Burleigh St, Strand
1839-55 . . 9 Castle St, Holborn
1855-73 . . 37 Castle St, Holborn
1871-73 . . 31 Keppel Street, Bloomsbury (home)
Taken from British Map Engravers, Worms & Baynton-Williams


© Peter Walker 2013 - 2014