Shakespeare, strikes and soapy pigs: a hand-drawn history of London – in pictures
From early settlements in Rotherhithe to riots in Georgian Shoreditch, artist Adam Dant explores the colourful history and geography of London in a series of maps depicting historical events and the odd tall tale
- Adam Dant’s Maps of London & Beyond exhibition is showing at The Map House, London from 28 June to 14 July. The book, Maps of London & Beyond, is published by Batsford in conjunction with Spitalfields Life
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Tudor Hackney
16th-century Hackney was the first village near London to have coaches for occasional passengers, hence the name “Hackney carriages”. All images: Maps of London & Beyond/ Adam Dant
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Georgian Hackney
In 1788, Cat and Mutton Fields hosted a sport where any contestant catching a soapy pig by its tail and holding it over his head won a gold-laced hat
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Victorian Hackney
The construction of Victoria Park in 1850 is said to have swept away a village of hovels formerly known as Botany Bay due to many of its inhabitants having been sent to “another place” bearing the same name
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Modern Hackney
The “great fog” of 1952 caused death and chaos in Hackney: a motorcyclist collided with a bus, a man died on a railway line and crime had “a little heyday”
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Early settlements at Rotherhithe (11th–17th century)
The name Rotherhithe, first recorded in the 12th century, is thought to mean “cattle-landing place”
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Shipbuilding at Rotherhithe (early 18th century)
Over the course of 1725, 1,000 tons of “unfragrant” whale blubber were boiled and processed at Greenland Dock for use in lamps
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Commercial docks at Rotherhithe (late 18th to 19th century)
Dockers struck at Surrey Docks in 1889 for the docker’s tanner, a rate of 6d an hour. The strike drew public attention to the issue of poverty in Victorian London
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Modern settlements at Rotherhithe (20th century on)
On 7 September 1940 the Surrey Docks were set on fire in the first raid of the blitz
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Tudor Shoreditch
William Shakespeare is said to have enjoyed a “bumper” (a large, overflowing glass) at an inn on the site of the present White Horse. In the late 1590s Richard Burbage’s sons Cuthbert and Richard dismantled the Curtain theatre in less than a week and transported it to the south bank of the Thames, where it was rebuilt as the Globe
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Georgian Shoreditch
In July 1736 militia were called from the Tower of London to quell 4,000 Shoreditch locals rioting against cheap Irish labour being used to build the new tower of St Leonard
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Victorian Shoreditch
Enthusiastic anarchists hoping to bring political awareness to the Old Nichol slum proletariat through their Boundary Street printing operation were said to find their efforts had as much effect as “tickling an elephant with straw”
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Modern Shoreditch
The IRA bomb that exploded on Bishopsgate in 1993 disturbed the rats in Shoreditch, who emerged from drains in large numbers
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Tudor Clerkenwell
In 1600–12, Shakespeare’s revels were rehearsed in the Great Hall at St John’s
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Georgian Clerkenwell
In 1747 the last tree on the north side of Clerkenwell Green was blown down during a storm
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Victorian Clerkenwell
In 1820, Arthur Thistlewood and his fellow Cato Street conspirators – who had planned to murder the British cabinet and prime minister Lord Liverpool – were kept at Coldbath Fields prison, home of the first treadmill. Thistlewood was hanged on 1 May
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Modern Clerkenwell
Vladimir Lenin met a young Joseph Stalin at the Crown and Anchor pub (now the Crown) in 1903
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