Old Map of West London in 1862 by Edward Stanford - St John's Wood, Kilburn, Kensal Green, Finchley Road, Willesden

Edward Stanford built his reputation as the pre-eminent map publisher of Victorian London, and this sheet comes from his ambitious Library Map of London, issued in 1862 across twenty-four sheets that together stretched to roughly two metres in width. Stanford had opened his map-selling business near Charing Cross in 1853, and within a decade, working with chief cartographer John Bolton, he produced a survey detailed enough that the Royal Geographical Society rated it among the most accurate plans of the capital yet issued. This particular sheet covers the north-western reaches of the growing city, an area still finding its shape as London's suburbs pushed outward from the centre.

The map records St John's Wood as a well-established district of villas and gardens, one of London's earliest planned suburbs, while Kilburn and Willesden appear only partly built up, still dotted with fields and lanes such as Shoot Up Hill running out toward Hampstead. Finchley Road threads through the sheet as a key route to the north-west, and Kensal Green is shown with its cemetery, opened in 1833 as one of the capital's first large landscaped burial grounds and already a fashionable resting place. Abbey Road, Hamilton Terrace and the smaller courts around Kilburn Vale are all marked, giving a fine sense of a landscape caught mid-transformation, years before the railways and trams brought the terraced streets that would soon fill these gaps.

A thoughtful gift for anyone who grew up in St John's Wood, Kilburn or Willesden, or who's just bought a house in the area and wants to see how their street looked before the railways arrived, this sheet is reproduced at high resolution, large enough to keep Stanford's dense lettering sharp on the wall, and available unframed in our full range of sizes.