Last modified: 2 November 2026
The early Ordnance Survey one-inch map of the country round London, from Brentford, Richmond and Kingston in the west to Lambeth, Camberwell and Peckham in the east, and from Kensington and Hammersmith down to Merton, Mitcham and Streatham. Wandsworth Common lies near the middle, still open and unenclosed, with the town on the Wandle and the Surrey Iron Railway running south beside the river. Zoom in to read the names of the houses, farms and hamlets.
The map. The Ordnance Survey’s first maps of England, the “Old Series”, were drawn at one inch to the mile and engraved on copper. The London area was surveyed in the first years of the nineteenth century; the exact date of this copy is not certain, and “about 1810” is an estimate. It shows the country before the railways, the new roads and the enclosure of the commons: Wandsworth, Battersea and Clapham are still villages among fields and market gardens.
This copy. In black and white, cleaned up: the faint grey grid lines that crossed the copy have been taken out, and the engraving sharpened so that the names and hachures read more clearly.
See also. The Wandsworth and Battersea tithe maps, 1838–1841, a generation later and in far more detail, and John Corris’s Plan of Battersea, 1787, a generation earlier.
Maps of this age are out of copyright. Prepared by Philip Boys, with Claude.
Build 2.