Old Map of London in 1746 by John Rocque, Sheet A2 - Mayfair, Hyde Park, Knightsbridge, Piccadilly, Grosvenor Square, Oxford St

This is sheet A2 of the celebrated twenty-four sheet survey of London produced by surveyor and cartographer John Rocque, engraved by John Pine and published in 1746. It was the most ambitious and detailed map of London attempted up to that point, the product of Rocque personally surveying the city's streets over several years to record buildings, squares and open ground with an accuracy well beyond anything that had come before. Sheet A2 covers the fashionable western reaches of the survey, taking in the area around Mayfair and Hyde Park on the western edge of the built-up city. As with the rest of the survey, the level of detail is considerable: London and Westminster are shown as already well developed and built up, in clear contrast to areas south of the river such as Southwark, Lambeth and Lewisham, which the survey records as still largely open fields at the time.

On this sheet, the map records Mayfair as it appeared in the mid-eighteenth century, together with Hyde Park along its western edge and the neighbouring area of Knightsbridge to the southwest. Piccadilly runs along the sheet, one of the principal routes leading out of London to the west, and Grosvenor Square is shown as one of the sheet's central features. Oxford Street marks the northern edge of the area covered, running along the boundary between the streets of Mayfair and the ground further north. As with the rest of Rocque and Pine's survey, these streets and squares are set out with careful, street-by-street accuracy, giving a detailed record of how this part of London was laid out in 1746, before the further growth of the following century changed it further.

This sheet makes a fitting gift to mark a special occasion connected to this part of London — an engagement or wedding anniversary celebrated near Grosvenor Square, a milestone birthday spent walking through Hyde Park, or years spent living or working around Mayfair, Knightsbridge or Piccadilly. It also pairs naturally with sheet C1, which covers Holborn, Bloomsbury and Camden, and makes sense as a companion for anyone collecting a fuller set of Rocque and Pine's 1746 sheets covering different parts of Georgian London. Every print is supplied unframed and available across our full range of sizes, so it can be scaled to suit anywhere from a study to a large sitting room wall.