Ogilby's Road from London to Holyhead

This road map includes London, Islington, and Highgate, and extends as far as Towcester. It was published as sheet 21 in the 1698 folio edition of John Ogilby’s pioneering road atlas, the ‘Britannia’.

Thousands of miles of roads were surveyed for this project. Smaller towns appeared in detail for the first time, and it was largely thanks to Ogilby’s influence that the Statute Mile was set at 1760 yards. 

Ogilby devised the project late in life. His modern biographer, Alan Ereira, explores Ogilby's  earlier incarnations as a dancing master, soldier, spy, theatre impresario, and translator, through which Ogilby survived the turbulent 17th century. Ereira also presents a provocative new reading of Ogilby's innovative and beautiful road atlas as a work of royalist propaganda – even expressed through the routes which he chose to include or emphasise.

Condition & Materials

Copper engraving, 31 x 43 cm, modern hand colour, blank verso