AN UNRECORDED PLAN OF LONDON. This map of the region twenty miles round London appeared to be completely unrecorded until one likely record was noted in a Sotheby’s auction on 31 July 1968, lot 930. Interestingly that example was printed on silk. Similar maps displaying twenty miles around London include Carington Bowles c.1760 (Howgego 116), Thomas Kitchin 1761 (Howgego 119), and Thomas Bowen 1770 (Howgego 147). However, none of these are the same plates. An extensive search online also reveals no examples.

Thomas Kitchin (1718-1784) is probably the best known cartographer of the eighteenth century. He was an engraver and publisher of great repute, having co-operated with a number of equally famed contemporaries. He was appointed Hydrographer to King George III and had an enormous output of maps, town plans, and charts, many devoted to British cartography. The first engravings that gave Thomas Kitchin some prominence where his fifty-six maps of the English and Welsh counties, published in ‘The London Magazine’ from 1747 to 1760. His name appeared on the title of each map and their popularity is reflected in the fact that they were reprinted on several occasions. Not in Howgego (1978); Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011)