Cartophilia

I’m a Cartophile loud and proud and don’t care who knows it.

Sound dramatic, but actually its only the love of maps. Old or new I can spend long periods of time perusing them without any plan in mind. If you can have such a thing, one of my favourites and an item I would take with my eight records on Dessert Island Discs would be the 1893 OS map of London.

Not only is it a great snapshot of the metropolis a hundred and twenty plus years ago, but the Cartographers had the foresight to include notations for structures that had once stood on the site of Victorian streetscape. Written in Gothic font and always described as “Site of“, they’re not always easy to decypher, but well worth the effort.

As far as I know this is the only OS map to have such annotations on it, earlier and later editions don’t seem to have them. It’s a small thing, but it makes me happy.