15.
MEN AND MAPS TO REMEMBER by ERIC HOOPER
Almost 400 years ago, in 1579, CHRISTO-
PHER SAXTON published his Atlas of the Counties
of Elizabethan England, thereby setting the
fashion for the clearcut small scale county
map. Two centuries later (we celebrated the
bicentenary last October), CHAPMAN and ANDRE
were surveying our county again, still doing
it the hard way, with roads scarcely improved;
local suspicions hardly less obstructive;
walking, riding and measuring just as arduous;
and the vagaries of the English weather as
unpredictable as in our own day. Yet when,
on 1st October 1777 their beautiful map of
Essex was published, it was at the large
scale of 2" to the mile, and a new spirit
was abroad. Inventiveness and competition
seethed, rural enclosures were hastening the
rout of landrooted families into the urban
chaos of industrial expansion. A nation on
the move became not only road conscious, but
in need of maps of far greater accuracy, at
a realistic scale.
Throughout 1977 > the British Museum
housed an exhibition deovted to WILLIAM ROY.
He deserves to be better known. As an enter-
prising Scot his first mark was made just
after the Young Pretender's 1745 rebellion.
Although George II's son gained the day at
Culloden the next year, it was his Deputy
Quarter Master General, Colonel Watson, who
had most keenly felt the need for adequate
maps of the campaign areas in the Highlands.
In 1747 he began a major survey. His team
on the ground included William Roy, already
at 21 a competent surveyor, as well as the
landscape artist Paul Sandby, to draw the
topographical sketches. Thus was sown the