JOHN ROCQUE. MAP OF LONDON, 1746 (c. 1746 England)

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Copper-engraved on 24 sheets, joined, 6'7" x 12'7" (2,01m x 3,84m).

400.00cm wide    217.00cm high    (157.48 inches wide  85.43 inches high)

inscribed within a central cartouche, ‘A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster and Borough of Southwark; From an actual Survey taken by John Rocque Land-Surveyor, and Engraved by John Pine, Bluemantle Pursuivant at Arms and Chief Engraver of Seals, &c. to His Majesty’, a Dedication within a cartouche to right to the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen of the City of London, their Wards individually identified and marked on the map, a third cartouche to the left with the scale and a list of abbreviations used in the map. 24 sheets at a scale of 26" to the mile. London, 1746.


The Rocque London Map of 1746 is a very significant large scale and detailed survey. It was the first ‘post-Fire’ map of the city since William Morgan’s plan of 1682 and is the primary topographical record of mid-18th Century London. John Rocque (d. 1762) was a French Huguenot, who worked in London from c. 1730 as a surveyor, engraver, cartographer and landscape designer, and made estate surveys of Kensington Gardens and of Hampton Court. He began work on the survey of London in 1737 and the map which resulted from this was finally published in 1746. The index, which was published in 1748, lists over 5,500 streets and details the subscribers, including Frederick, Prince of Wales, who appointed Rocque as Royal Cartographer in 1751. Roque subsequently carried out a survey of Dublin and published a map of the city in 1756.