Old Map of London in 1746 by John Rocque, Sheet C3 - Lambeth, Vauxhall, Westminster, Millbank, Kennington

John Rocque's great survey of London ran to twenty-four separate sheets, together forming one of the largest and most detailed city plans produced anywhere in the eighteenth century, and Sheet C3 offered here is one of that set, engraved by John Pine and published in 1746 under the full title A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, and Borough of Southwark. Rather than the crowded streets of the City, this sheet covers the stretch of the Thames where Westminster faces Lambeth across the water, a part of the survey that captures riverside gardens, marshland and grand institutions side by side.

On the Westminster bank the sheet shows the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey close by Millbank, at that date still lined with market gardens rather than buildings, and it catches Westminster Bridge partway through its long construction, only the second crossing of the Thames in London after London Bridge itself. Across the river, Lambeth Palace stands out clearly, with the pleasure grounds of Vauxhall Gardens drawing fashionable crowds a little further south, and the open common land of Kennington and the low-lying marshes of Lambeth filling out the sheet's southern reaches.

This sheet pairs naturally with the store's Sheet D1 from the same survey, which covers Holborn and Clerkenwell further north. It is reproduced at high resolution from an original 1746 engraving and offered in a range of sizes. Collected sheet by sheet, Rocque's survey lets a single room slowly assemble the whole of Georgian London.