Everyone loves looking at old maps. They can provide hours of fascination for anyone wanting to see what the area was like when it was still fields and to discover which streets and buildings have appeared, and possibly disappeared again, since. To satisfy this popular demand, the City of Westminster Archives Centre has been working with a digitisation company called Manuscripti to bring some of the treasures of its map collection to a wider audience wi
th a new disc available for sale.
Where better to start than with the fashionable area of St Marylebone, or Marylebone as it is usually called today? It contains some of London's finest Georgian town planning, and yet still retains its intimate village atmosphere around the high streets in Marylebone and St John's Wood. The St Marylebone Through the Ages disc contains a selection of plans dating from 1708 to 1862, including some kindly loaned by the Howard de Walden Estate, Portman Estate, Guildhall Library and Church Commissioners. Incorporating Manuscripti's advanced timeline technology, the disc overlays maps of subsequent dates to show how the grid pattern of the grand 18th century streets and squares north of Oxford Street gives way to spacious mid-19th century villas in the leafy suburb of St John's Wood via the more densely populated area of small terraces around Marylebone Station and Church Street. The disc starts with a short history of the area by Alison Kenney, archivist, to set the maps in context and includes a select bibliography for anyone wanting to delve further into the history.
The St Marylebone Through the Ages disc is on sale for £18.00 plus £1.95 postage and packing from:
City of Westminster Archives Centre
10 St Ann's Street
London
SW1P 2DE
Tel: 020-7641 5180
Fax: 020-7641 5179
E-mail:
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Web: www.westminster.gov.uk/libraries/archives/publications.cfm
If you are inspired by the maps you see on the disc, you can become your own house detective by visiting the Archives Centre to see further maps of the area as well as all the books listed in the bibliography and a large collection of prints and photographs. You can even see who has lived in your house by looking at electoral registers, street directories, rate books and census returns. Further details can be found in Alison Kenney, Tracing the History of Your House: A Guide to Sources for the History of Houses in Westminster, City of Westminster Archives Centre, 1996, which is also available from the bookshop at the Archives Centre together with a selection of the books listed in the bibliography and reprints of late 19th and early 20th century Ordnance Survey maps.
