Old Map of London St Giles in 1720 by John Strype and John Stow - Great Russell Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, High Holborn, Drury Lane

This plan of the parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields was published in 1720, when John Strype issued his greatly expanded edition of John Stow's Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster. Stow had first surveyed London in 1598; Strype brought the work up to date more than a century later, adding a series of engraved parish maps of which this is one. The St Giles sheet shows a district in transition — open fields within living memory, but by 1720 filling rapidly with streets and courts as London spread westward to meet Westminster.

The parish church of St Giles anchors the map, with St Giles High Street running past its yard. Great Russell Street crosses the top of the sheet along the southern edge of Bloomsbury, and Southampton Square — today's Bloomsbury Square — appears under its original name. Lincoln's Inn Fields, the largest public square in London, dominates the south-east corner, bounded by High Holborn and Great Queen Street, while Wild Street and Drury Lane run down toward the theatres of Covent Garden. Street names carry their eighteenth-century spellings, and the crowded courts and alleys between them would later become notorious as the St Giles rookery, the district Hogarth and Dickens both took as shorthand for old London at its most tangled.

This is a map for London enthusiasts with a connection to a very particular patch of the city: anyone who has lived, studied or worked around Bloomsbury, Holborn or Covent Garden will recognise street after street. It makes a fitting gift for a barrister with chambers near Lincoln's Inn, a theatre lover who knows Drury Lane, or a Londoner whose family history runs through the parish registers of St Giles. The map is printed unframed on quality paper stock and is available in nine sizes, from 16x20 inches up to A0.