The Roads from London to Bath & Wells

An interesting strip map of British roads from the late 17th century.

While strip-style road maps had existed long before John Ogilby, the Scottish cartographer was the first to popularize their use for land travel through the publication of his atlas Britannia, first issued in 1675. It included 100 maps of British roads, created at a uniform scale of 1 inch to 1 mile.

The large scale allows for the presentation of minute details like individual buildings, brooks and streams, bridges, windmills, ponds, signal beacons and estate halls. Topography is depicted pictorially, with the hills situated according to whether the traveler was descending or ascending. All these details, as well as the compass roses on each strip, would have been of particular relevance to someone traveling by carriage, on horseback, or even by foot.

This particular example shows two different routes one could take from London to Wells, in Somerset County. The first, seen on the left three strips, shows the road from Chippenham (lower left) through Bath and onto Wells. On their way the traveler would pass several smith shops, a mill and a prison, and cross several stone bridges. The second route begins in Marlborough, at the bottom of the center strip, and proceeds through Devizes, Troubridge, and Phillips Norton before arriving at Wells in the far upper right. The city’s cathedral is noted.