The British Library has been holding an exhibition of historic maps of London, and this book is published to coincide with it, although serving as a more permanent record of the growth and development of Britain's capital city. Apart from a few earlier sketches we have a much clearer idea of the city from Wyngaerde's panorama of about 1544, strictly speaking not actually a map. About a decade later, however, a copperplate map was engraved, only fragments of which survive, showing a part of the city where the buildings are shown in elevation but clearly laid out as a plan giving the names of streets and open spaces. Later cartographers drew substantially on that original, illustrating the growth of the city towards to end of the century and beyond.
During the course of the next century the map makers' skills graphically trace the expansion of the city westwards towards Westminster and the royal palaces of Whitehall and later St James's. One map shows the extent of the great fire of 1666 and how the area was quickly rebuilt afterwards. Whitfield pays particular attention to the river as the reason for the foundation of London and its lifeline as the principal thoroughfare for people and commerce even as late as the middle of the last century.
The age of elegance, principally during the eighteenth century, saw continuing, massive expansion towards the west, where the aristocracy seized the opportunity of building on their London estates and so vastly enriching their families. On the other hand we have the less agreeable side such as described by Hogarth. By the middle of the next century such was the growth of population encouraged by better transport – bridges, roads, canals and especially railways – that social conditions, particularly in the east and south of London, became of great concern to the government and other public bodies as well as philanthropic organizations.
By the start of the twentieth century there had been great efforts to clear the slums and provide open spaces within the boundaries of London or immediately outside. The devastation caused by bomb damage during the Second World War gave an opportunity to redevelop whole areas, although Whitfield is particularly scathing about the subsequent fad for all those tower blocks as an unsuitable way of housing people and office workers. He also deplores the brutalities of the South Bank and Barbican developments and the vulgarity of the London Eye.
This is a fascinating account of how London had been growing and changing during the past five centuries or so. There are very many illustrations as well as maps, mostly reproduced fairly clearly, although I had some difficulty with some of the tiny print. There is a select bibliography and an index.
