My friend Einar has devised an ingenious visual aid for anyone confused by Fred Stingemore’s series of London Underground passenger maps. I wrote about Stingemore and his maps a few months ago. Produced between 1925 and 1932 they are the immediate predecessors of Harry Beck’s diagram, and they don’t always…
Author: Tim
Tim is one half of Bryars & Bryars. He specialises in maps and is co-organiser of the London Map Fair, the largest of its kind in the world. He co-authored a book, A History of the 20th Century in 100 Maps, which you can order from this website.
Kerry Lee’s London
Artist and pictorial map maker Kerry Lee created two distinctive maps of London, both of which were revised and adapted over a 20 year period, between the late 1930s and mid 1950s. (Read our two posts about Kerry’s life and work here and here) ‘London Town’ was Kerry’s first foray…
A Tourist’s Guide to Stalin’s USSR
This little clutch of maps and guides was acquired in 1936 by a British tourist in Stalin’s USSR. Some of them bear the original owner’s dated inscription, ‘W. Hackett, 22.12.36’. I’ve encountered some of these publications individually before, and discussed them here. The star of the show for me might,…
For Your Convenience – the first queer city guide?
Back in April I wrote about a Gay-Z map of London, published by the Man to Man bookshop in Notting Hill c. 1977. It remains the earliest example of a separately published LGBT map of London I’ve seen, and I’m pleased to say that it will feature in a forthcoming…
The Edwardian origins of the tri-fold tube map: fit for the waistcoat pocket
At the entrance of any modern Tube station are racks of passenger maps, free for anyone who needs one. The familiar format is very practical. Each map folds out to reveal three panels. It fits easily into the pocket and can be unfolded, even at platform level, without being carried…
Colouring Inside the Lines 2
This post is a follow-up to Colouring Inside the Lines At last I had the opportunity to trawl through back issues of the Evening News for 1907, and it proved to be very fruitful. The Evening News and its readers seem to have been fascinated by the latest developments underground.…
Fred Stingemore: Man in the Middle
Fred Stingemore’s contribution to the mapping of London’s Underground has been somewhat eclipsed by the reputations of the designers who came before and after, MacDonald Gill and Harry Beck. It was Gill who stripped away the surface topography completely, including the River Thames, leaving behind a clean but still geographically…
London Rebuilt: 350 Years since the Great Fire
One of the maps we’re looking forward to displaying at this year’s London Map Fair is an exceptionally rare survey of the city, made just after the Great Fire of London by John Oliver. Oliver’s entry in the Dictionary of British Map Engravers describes him as a builder, architect, glass-painter,…
Colouring Inside the Lines
It is easy to overlook that fact that by 1933, when the first edition of Harry Beck’s famous diagram was presented to the public, Beck was able to draw on a full sixty years of earlier attempts to map London’s Underground. A key component in the success of Beck’s design…
From A-Z to Gay-Z
Now and again I write in the hope that one of our readers is going to be able to offer further enlightenment. Today’s topic is gay city maps, made specifically for a gay audience. As far as I know, the ‘London Gay City Map’ issued with the 1982 Spartacus International…