The massive expansion of the Victorian age produced a demand for detailed maps to determine ownership of land and to plan development. Edward Stanford, a leading Victorian cartographer, produced these maps to show the railways, factories, docks and roads that were springing up everywhere. So detailed are these maps that even individual gardens of suburban homes are shown as are separate platforms of the new railway termini and, astonishingly, even the individual statues in the city’s squares. Anyone seeking information about their forebears will be able to see the roads, alleyways and outlying villages where they lived; where they went to school; the pubs where they spent their meagre wages; the churches and chapels where they were married and where they attended Sunday services; the factories, docks and farms where they worked; also maybe the miserable workhouses where they ended their days and the burial grounds where they were laid to rest. Local historians will find fields separating Hampstead and Kilburn with just the occasional farm; footpaths wandering through open country between Peckham and Dulwich. Closer to the centre, the main activity in Parsons Green is market gardening and in Kentish Town there was a vast slaughterhouse, with separate sections for sheep and cattle, close to the suitably named Butcher’s Arms public house. Factories for making calico, lead shot, turpentine and candles as well as distilleries and breweries are marked and along the river are docks and factories for timber, flour and all the commodities newly arrived from the rapidly growing empire. Large houses, just one deep, face onto Clapham Common with farmland at the end of their large gardens. Numerous prisons, asylums and orphanages are shown as well as institutions such as The Soldiers Daughter’s Home, The Aged Governess Asylum and a Female Reformatory. The early railways are marked as are the houses of famous people such as Sir Rowland Hill the social reformer who invented the postal service. Noticing what is marked is often as fascinating as seeing what has not yet been developed and together they provide a fascinating glimpse of Mid Victorian London.
