I’ll Take This: Plan de London

You might remember a few years ago when I wrote about the amazing Turgot Plan de Paris. I had put it on a large wall in my former house.

Unfortunately, when I eventually took it down in preparation for moving, Connor chewed several pieces of it and they were unsalvageable for the new house, in which there’s a perfect hallway.

A month or so ago, I was looking back through old posts from Ben Pentreath, a London-based architect and shop-owner, and saw that he had a a map of London, similar to the Plan de Paris, in his flat.

Amazingly, the sections fit PERFECTLY on the wall!

Ben said it was the John Rocque map of London, done in a similar style to the Michael-Etienne Turgot map of a similar period, in this case, 1746. It’s officially called The plan of the cities of London and Westminster, and borough of Southwark and is on a scale of 26 inches to a mile. For more information on the map, click here. The map shows internal details for some buildings, such as St Paul's Cathedral, and in less densely populated areas gardens are shown.

And damn if there’s not a link to each piece of the map! I might have to print it out again! I’ve been using Staples to print large format pieces, and since everything’s digital, they do a great job for not a lot of money!

If you don’t want to go to the trouble, the map is available here for a mere $850. I think that I paid $60 for the Paris map. It’s in 24 sheets of cover-weight stock. Or you can buy the map at 1/10th of its original size for $35.00. Ben’s currently in negotiations to re-produce the John Rocque map and he told me to look for it sometime in 2014.

I saw another one listed for $2,400, but the link was broken. However, someone had this fabulous comment, “Old maps make your space seem exotic and traveled.” Quite a trick.

This contemporary Plan de London was produced in 2012 for the Queen’s Jubilee and the Olympics. It’s about 35 x 20 inches and is printed on canvas. It took three years to draw.Only 200 were printed and at £79, that seems like quite a good deal. There’s a paper version for £15. Click here for details.

Do you like  maps as much as I do?

Related product you might see: