Old Map of Greater London in 1922 - River Thames, Suburbs, Middlesex, Surrey
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"Greater London" meant something different in 1922 than it does today, referring not to a unit of local government but to the wider statistical area that the Registrar General had used since the 1901 census to describe London and its surrounding built-up districts. This map belongs to that older, informal sense of the term, drawn at a small scale so the whole sprawling conurbation could be shown on one sheet rather than the square mile of detail a street atlas would need.
The Thames runs through the centre of the map much as it always has, though by 1922 the built-up area around it had pushed well beyond the old County of London boundary in every direction. Suburbs newly reached by Underground and main-line railway extensions were creeping out into what had been Middlesex farmland to the north-west, in the areas the Metropolitan Railway had taken to marketing as Metro-land only a few years earlier, while similar growth was under way south toward Croydon and east toward Ilford and Romford. Tram routes and the first motor bus services, marked alongside the railways, show how ordinary Londoners were actually getting between the centre and these new outer districts.
If your family moved out from central London to one of these interwar suburbs, this map captures roughly the world they arrived in, making it a thoughtful gift to mark a family milestone or house move. Printed at high resolution from an original of the period, it ships unframed and is available in the same range of sizes as the rest of our collection.
