The eighteenth-century topographer Richard Gough (1735-1809) once owned the map now famously named after him residing in the Bodleian Library. He was Director of the Society of Antiquaries from 1771-97 and bequeathed much of his private collection of medieval material to the Bodleian. In 1780 he published ‘British Topography. Or, an Historical Account of what has been done for Illustrating the Topographical Antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland’, a compendium of British maps and topographical material known at the time. Sir John Cullum of Hardwick House wrote to Gough in 1782 stating that ‘next to the Bible’ his text was the work he most consulted. ‘Map collectors at least should recognise ‘British Topography’ as the first comprehensive inventory of British maps and associated topographical literature. There has not been a work of comparable scope in the 200 years since it was written and although it may be dated it has not been replaced’ (Walters).

Inclued here are 4 of the maps from that work. Two are illustrations of the Mathew Paris maps of 1250. Provenance: acquired from Doreen Green in 1993; private collection. Shirley (1991) pp. vi-viii; Walters (1978) ‘Richard Gough’s Map Collecting for the ‘British Topography”, in the ‘Map Collector’ no. 2 pp. 26-8.