UK road map circa 1675

Lisa Katayama 10:43 am Mon Aug 10, 2009

Strange Maps has this lovely antique map of London circa 1675, created by an adventurous man named John Ogilby:

The life of John Ogilby (1600-1676) can be qualified without exaggeration as rather eventful. He freed his father from debtors' prison by buying a winning lottery ticket, founded a dance school in London and later Dublin's Theatre Royal, got shipwrecked on his return from Ireland, produced a very successful English verse transaltion of Virgil, lost all his property in the Great Fire of London (1666), and towards the end of his life managed to produce the Britannia Atlas (1675), considered to be the first road atlas of Britain.

The atlas, which housed a series of road maps like this one used for traveling through the UK way back when, is apparently also responsible for setting the 1,760-yards-to-a-mile standard. A web site dedicated to Priddy's Hard, an area in Hampshire, England, has this and other old school maps worth checking out if you're a closet road geek like me.

Scroll Britannia: the UK's First Road Map via Strange Maps

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