John Rocque, England and Wales, ca. 1780

Full Title: England and Wales, drawn from the most accurate surveys containing all the cities, boroughs, market towns & villages; in which are included all the improvements and observations both astronomical and topographical, which have been made by members of the Royal Society & others. Down to the present year, the whole corrected & improv’d b John Rocque, Chorographer to his Majesty.

This very detailed four-sheet map of England and Wales by John Rocque shows roads by type, cities, distances, market towns, latitude and longitude of important places, villages with and without post stages, distances from London, and more (see Explanation on map). Counties are outlined in color. Relief is shown pictorially. There is an inset map of the Isles of Scilly, many drawings of tall ships in fleets and alone, with abbeys and castles, noted. This map as well as his two-sheet map of Ireland appeared in Thomas Kitchin’s A General Atlas Describing the Whole Universe of 1790.

Rocque was born in France circa 1704, to a Huguenot family who fled to England in about 1709. Little is known about his early life. He was a prolific mapmaker in London from 1735 to 1762 where he worked as a surveyor, engraver and publisher.

He is principally remembered for his Map of London which he began work in 1737. It was published in 24 printed sheets in 1746, and was by far the most detailed map of London published up to that time. To this day, it remains an important historical resource. The Map of London and his other maps brought him an appointment as cartographer to Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1751. A fire in 1750 destroyed his business but by 1753 he employed ten draughtsmen and published The Small British Atlas: Being a New Set of Maps of All the Counties of England and Wales. John Rocque is mentioned in nearly every major scholarly work on British maps of the period.