London (England) -- Antiquities; London (England) -- Maps; London (England) -- Maps -- Early works to 1800
ENGRAVER.--William Faithorne the elder was born in 1616, and was an
engraver and portrait painter. He engraved numerous portraits, book-plates,
maps, and title-pages. Among his works are two large maps, entitled "Cities
of London and Westminster," and of "Virginia and Maryland."
ORIGINAL.--The only two copies of the original issue known to be extant are
in the Print Rooms, British Museum, and in the Bibliothèque Nationale of
Paris. The map here given is taken from a sheet of that in the British
Museum, and is on the same scale.
DETAILS.--It will be noticed that the sheet chosen for inclusion in this
atlas shows very nearly the same area as the map of Ogilby which follows,
but does not go quite so far eastward as the Tower. The City wall is
clearly shown along the north side of the City, and the bastion near
Cripplegate stands out; the town ditch can be traced just beyond this
corner running southward. It was the curious and apparently meaningless
angle that the wall makes here which led Sir Walter Besant to suggest that
it may have been designed to exclude the ancient Roman amphitheatre, of
which the site is now lost (see _Early London_, p. 85). The Fleet River is
shown still open and crossed by bridges, of which there are no fewer than
five from Holborn to the mouth. That at Fleet Street shows, indeed, a
continuous line of houses. St. Paul's is very clearly delineated. The
figures within the City refer to the old churches, of which a list is given
below. Notice the gable roofs, still the chief style of domestic
architecture. The lines of the streets in the heart of the City remain
wonderfully the same to our own day. Outside the walls the City is
stretching out great arms into the country. There is one such arm made by
the continuous houses fringing Bishopsgate Street as far as the extreme
northern limit of the map. Then there is a gap between this and Moorgate
Street, including all the ground known at Moorfields and Finsbury. A few
scattered houses and some cultivated fields cover this space, and in one
corner is "Bedlame."
A mass of houses lies westward, running on to the Charter House, northward
of which are open fields, and so to "Clarkin Well."
THE SEVERALL CHVRCHES WITHIN THE WALLES OF LONDON DISTINGUISHED BY
SEUERALL FIGURES, BY WHICH ALLSOE THE EYE MAY PARTLY BE GUIDED TO THE
EMINENT STREETS IN OR NEERE WHICH THEY STAND, WHICH COULD NOT WELL BE
OTHERWISE DEMONSTRATED, IN REGARD OF THE SMALL SCALE BY WHICH THIS MAPP
IS DESCRIBED.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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