A section describing the road from London to Brighton taking in Epsom, Leatherhead, and Dorking published by James Edwards (fl.1787-1820) in 1787. He was a surveyor, engraver and publisher who started out in Dorking, Surrey. He focused on local material relating to Surrey, Sussex and Kent. He went on to produce the complicated work entitled ‘A Companion from London to Brighthelmston, in Sussex; Consisting of a Set of Topographical Maps from Actual Surveys, On a Scale of Two Inches to a Mile’.

The first clear evidence for the project appeared in January 1788, when William Bray described it as ‘a work which he is now publishing in numbers, being a map and description of the road from London to Brighthelmstone, taking in a good deal of the adjacent country’ (‘Archaeologia’ 9 (1789) p. 106). It appears that it can consist of three different publications. ‘A Companion from London to Brighthelmston’, the ‘Description of Southwark, Lambeth, Newington …’ and sometimes the ‘Tabulae Distantiae’, 1789. The ‘Companion’ is made up of two Parts.

The plate collation is even more varied. The ‘set’ of 9 numbered plates of the route from London to Brighton are all orientated to the east and are variously dated between 1787 and 1800. Where identified the engraver is Edwards himself. The detail found on the roads is truly amazing, the main one here now known as the A24 includes mileage markers from London. Fordham (1924) p. 45; Giles, Phyllis ‘The Last of the Warrens: Sir George Warren, K.B. (1735-1801)’; Kingsley (1982) App. VII no. 3; Tooley’s Dictionary (1999-2004); Upcott (1968) pp. 1217-9; Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).