Old Map of London in 1746 by John Rocque, Sheet E2 - London Bridge, Monument, Bank, Cannon Street, Borough

Sheet E2 of Rocque's great survey sits directly over the ancient crossing point of the Thames, where London Bridge had carried traffic between the City and Southwark for six centuries by the time this plan was drawn in 1746. Positioned one column west of the Tower in the surveyor's twenty-four-sheet grid, E2 covers the financial heart of the City on the north bank and the district of Borough immediately opposite, making it one of the most densely built single sheets in the entire survey.

North of the river, the sheet records the Monument to the Great Fire of London, raised by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke in the 1670s close to where the fire began, along with the Bank of England, chartered in 1694 and by 1746 already established on Threadneedle Street, and the run of Cannon Street cutting east through the old walled City. South of the bridge, Borough High Street is shown lined with coaching inns that served travellers heading toward Kent and the south coast, with the edge of Bermondsey's riverside trades just visible at the sheet's eastern corner. Cheapside and the lanes around St Paul's churchyard fill out the sheet's western reach, dense with the courts and alleys typical of the unreformed medieval street plan that still governed the City in Rocque's day.

Engraved by John Pine from Rocque's original survey and reproduced here at high resolution, this sheet makes a considered gift for a City worker, a Borough resident, or a collector assembling the full plan of Georgian London one section at a time, and pairs naturally with our other Rocque sheets.