John Ellis’s 1767 old map of London, Westminster and Southwark

Detail from John Ellis’s 1767 London Guide showing Georgian streets and public buildings

Detail from John Ellis’s 1767 old map of London showing the Thames and Georgian city

Old Map of London 1767 – John Ellis’s London Guide

Name: Old Map of London 1767 – John Ellis’s London Guide
SKU: 9584166282
Availability: InStock

Price range: £29.95 through £39.95

John Ellis’s London Guide, 1767

Published in 1767, John Ellis’s London Guide is a compact but exceptionally informative plan of the Cities of London and Westminster and the Borough of Southwark. Its full title describes it as a pocket plan showing the “new buildings” up to that year, making it a practical guide to a capital that was expanding rapidly during the Georgian period.

The plan covers the whole built-up area of London, extending west towards Hyde Park, east towards Shadwell and south into Southwark and the Newington area. Streets are generally named, while royal palaces and important public buildings are picked out within the urban fabric. The Thames runs across the centre of the composition, with bridges, river stairs and waterside features reinforcing the river’s central role in everyday London life.

The map also records features that reveal the social infrastructure of the eighteenth-century city: markets, hospitals, almshouses, prisons, government buildings, waterworks, places of worship and the Inns of Court. Turnpike roads and routes leading outward from London show the connections between the capital and the wider country beyond its streets.

One particularly useful feature of surviving editions is the table of churches and principal public buildings positioned beneath the map. This transformed the plan from a simple street image into a working guide for visitors and residents trying to navigate Georgian London.

Ellis’s plan was printed for Carington Bowles, one of the leading London map and print publishers of the period. The map belongs to a long sequence of practical pocket plans that were repeatedly updated as London changed, but the 1767 edition preserves the city before the major redevelopment and suburban expansion of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Size

Clear

Questions? Request a Call Back

Description

The London Guide, or a Pocket Plan of the Cities of London & Westminster, & Borough of Southwark was issued by John Ellis in 1767 and printed for Carington Bowles. It is an excellent example of the practical engraved maps produced for people who needed to understand and navigate a rapidly changing Georgian capital.

Map Details

Mapmaker: John Ellis
Publisher: Carington Bowles
Date: 1767
Original title: The London Guide, or a Pocket Plan of the Cities of London & Westminster, & Borough of Southwark
Scale: approximately 1:15,840
Coverage: The full built-up area of London, Westminster and Southwark

A Practical Guide to Georgian London

The emphasis is firmly on usefulness. Streets are named across the built-up area and important buildings are identified, allowing the map to function as a true pocket guide. The accompanying table of churches and public buildings made it possible to match numbered or named features with significant institutions across the city.

London, Westminster and Southwark

The plan shows the three principal urban components of eighteenth-century London: the commercial City, the governmental and fashionable districts around Westminster, and Southwark on the opposite bank. Hyde Park marks the western limit of dense development, while the eastern districts extend toward Shadwell and the riverside communities.

Public Life and Infrastructure

Beyond streets and buildings, the map records markets, hospitals, almshouses, prisons, waterworks, river stairs, turnpike roads and places of worship. These details are especially useful because they show how the city functioned, not merely how it looked.

The Thames remains central to the composition, crossed by bridges and lined with access points and commercial activity. At the same time, turnpike roads lead outward from London, demonstrating the capital’s connections with the wider country.

London Before the Nineteenth-Century Metropolis

The 1767 date is important. This is London before the railway age, before the great Victorian suburbs and before many of the major street improvements that would reshape the centre. The city is large and complex, but its limits remain clearly visible.

For local history and family history, that makes the map particularly valuable: places now deep within modern London can still be seen close to the edge of the eighteenth-century built-up area.

Supplied unframed as a fine art print.