![Ordnance Survey reproduction Bodleian map Britain 1325-1350](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Ordnance_Survey_reproduction_Bodleian_map_Britain_1325-1350.jpg)
The Gough Map or Bodleian Map
is a
Late Medieval
The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe, the Renai ...
map
A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes.
Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...
of the island of
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
. Its precise dates of production and authorship are unknown. It is named after
Richard Gough
Charles Richard Gough (born 5 April 1962) is a Scottish former professional footballer who played as a defender.
Gough played in the successful Dundee United team of the early 1980s, winning the Scottish league title in 1982–83 and reachi ...
, who bequeathed the map to the
Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second- ...
in 1809. He acquired the map from the estate of the antiquarian
Thomas "Honest Tom" Martin in 1774. Numerous copies of it have been made, with an interactive online version created at
Queen's University, Belfast
, mottoeng = For so much, what shall we give back?
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. It measures 115 by 56 cm.
Date
There has been no authoritative date for the map's production.
Thomas Martin Thomas or Tom Martin may refer to:
Born 16th century
*Thomas Martin (politician, died 1583) (1530–1583), MP for Dorchester
*Thomas Martin (lawyer) (1521–1593), MP for Ludgershall, Saltash and Hindon
Born 17th century
*Thomas Martin of Pal ...
believed it dated from the reign of
Edward III
Edward III (13 November 1312 – 21 June 1377), also known as Edward of Windsor before his accession, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from January 1327 until his death in 1377. He is noted for his military success and for restoring r ...
, while 19th-century scholarship suggested a date of c. 1300, during the reign of
Edward I
Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he ruled the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony as a vassal o ...
. More recently, the map was believed to have been made within an eleven-year window, based on historical changes of place names and sizes.
The earliest given date is deduced by the depiction of a city wall around
Coventry
Coventry ( or ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its ...
, which was first constructed in 1355. The latter date is usually given as 1366, the year in which the town marked on the map as
Sheppey was renamed
Queenborough
Queenborough is a town on the Isle of Sheppey in the Swale borough of Kent in South East England.
Queenborough is south of Sheerness. It grew as a port near the Thames Estuary at the westward entrance to the Swale where it joins the River M ...
.
Most recent studies, based on handwriting and stylistic evidence, support a later period of production. One study concludes that the map must have been made in the early years of the fifteenth century, while another suggests that the map was produced in the 1370s but extensively revised, perhaps as late as 1430.
It is generally accepted that the map may have been conceived earlier, and that it could have been one of several similar copies. In particular, it has been argued that some of the information on the map reflects the interests of Edward I, dating the prototype to around 1280.
Authorship
The map's authorship is also unknown. It is thought that much of the information about the map was gained from either one or more men who travelled around Great Britain as part of Edward I's military expeditions into
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
and
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
. The areas of the map's fringe with the most accurate detail often correspond with those areas in which Edward's troops were present.
The accuracy of the map in the
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham.
In N ...
and
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...
areas suggest that the author could be from this region.
However, it is also possible that the map was constructed based upon the collation of various people's local knowledge. For example, the cartographic accuracy in
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...
could be explained by the fact that
William Rede, Fellow of Merton College, had successfully calculated the geographic coordinates for Oxford in 1340.
Topography and accuracy
![Descriptio Prime Tabulae Europae](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Descriptio_Prime_Tabulae_Europae.jpg)
The Gough Map is important due to its break with previous theologically based mapping. Apart from the
Tabula Peutingeriana
' (Latin Language, Latin for "The Peutinger Map"), also referred to as Peutinger's Tabula or Peutinger Table, is an illustrated ' (ancient Roman road map) showing the layout of the ''cursus publicus'', the road network of the Roman Empire.
The m ...
, its depiction of routes and marked distances is unique in British maps before the 17th century. And compared to previously known maps, like Ptolemy's
Geography
Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and ...
, it greatly improves the detail on the coast of England and Wales, although its depiction of the then independent
Kingdom of Scotland
The Kingdom of Scotland (; , ) was a sovereign state in northwest Europe traditionally said to have been founded in 843. Its territories expanded and shrank, but it came to occupy the northern third of the island of Great Britain, sharing a la ...
is very poor.
Towns are shown in some detail, with
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
and
York
York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...
written in gold lettering and other principal settlements illustrated in detail.
Despite its accuracy, the map does contain a number of other errors. Notably,
island
An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...
s and
lake
A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...
s such as
Anglesey
Anglesey (; cy, (Ynys) Môn ) is an island off the north-west coast of Wales. It forms a principal area known as the Isle of Anglesey, that includes Holy Island across the narrow Cymyran Strait and some islets and skerries. Anglesey island ...
and
Windermere
Windermere (sometimes tautology (language), tautologically called Windermere Lake to distinguish it from the nearby town of Windermere, Cumbria (town), Windermere) is the largest natural lake in England. More than 11 miles (18 km) in leng ...
are oversized, whilst the strategic importance of rivers is shown by their emphasis. Well known but geographically small features such as
the Peninsula in
Durham Durham most commonly refers to:
*Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham
*County Durham, an English county
* Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States
*Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...
are also overly-prominent.
The map contains numerous references to mythology as if they were geographical fact, as illustrated by comments about
Brutus
Marcus Junius Brutus (; ; 85 BC – 23 October 42 BC), often referred to simply as Brutus, was a Roman politician, orator, and the most famous of the assassins of Julius Caesar. After being adopted by a relative, he used the name Quintus Serv ...
' mythical landings in
Devon
Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...
.
Nevertheless, it remains the most accurate map of Britain prior to the 16th century.
The red lines
A notable feature of the Gough Map is the disjointed network, across much of England and Wales, of narrow red lines drawn between settlements. With few exceptions, each is marked with a distance (of an unknown unit) in Roman numerals.
Richard Gough
Charles Richard Gough (born 5 April 1962) is a Scottish former professional footballer who played as a defender.
Gough played in the successful Dundee United team of the early 1980s, winning the Scottish league title in 1982–83 and reachi ...
described these lines as 'roads', and that description held throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Indeed, the document is still often referred to as a 'road map of Britain'. In a change of emphasis, however, recent scholarship sees the lines as routes, or as graphic representations of distance rather than of physical roads.
Scholars have struggled to explain the idiosyncratic inclusions and omissions. For example, there are no routes from London towards the south or east, and large sections of
Watling Street
Watling Street is a historic route in England that crosses the River Thames at London and which was used in Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and throughout the Middle Ages. It was used by the ancient Britons and paved as one of the main R ...
are omitted.
It has been speculated that the selection of routes might reflect the movements or interests of the map's owner, or that the compiler chose to show only the routes for which he had recorded distances, from existing itineraries. In any case, as the route network neither covers the whole of the map nor shows all the principal routes, it could not have served as a wayfinding aid in the sense that the term 'road map' implies. The lines are generally considered to be a secondary feature – even an afterthought – on a map principally of settlements.
Recent research
In 2012 an interdisciplinary team convened to take a new look at the Gough map. Their task was to re-evaluate the existing, often contradictory, literatures with the aid of newly-available high resolution scans and spectral imaging techniques. The team reported its findings at a work-in-progress Symposium in 2015 at the Bodleian Library, and a summary of provisional findings was published in 2017. These qualify much that has hitherto been believed about the map. Most significantly, it is proposed that the extant cartographical image is not a single map, but an accumulation of three distinct layers: Layer One (1390-1410) showing the whole of Britain; Layer Two (first quarter 15th century) comprising England south of the Wall and Wales; Layer Three (last quarter 15th century) restricted to south-east and south-central England. The last two layers in particular are individualised by systematic re-inkings, additions of colour and other details and alterations to place-names.
A study of the pinholes was undertaken. The holes occur in groups, marking the shapes of many of the pictorial town signs across the map – though the holes are absent from Kent, East Anglia, and the southwest. Some of the pricked outlines have no corresponding ink line, and in some places the group of holes is offset from the inked sign. This has led to the conclusion that the holes are most likely medieval in origin, and were made while copying onto the map during its first production, rather than while copying from it. Hitherto they were thought to have been part of the copying process for the creation of the facsimile for Gough's ''British Topography''.
Traditional conclusions about other aspects of the map were revised, including many transcriptions of place-names and the identification of some places represented on the map. New discoveries have also been made about the subsequent history of the map. Grey stains over many of the place names have been found to be caused by a
reagent
In chemistry, a reagent ( ) or analytical reagent is a substance or compound added to a system to cause a chemical reaction, or test if one occurs. The terms ''reactant'' and ''reagent'' are often used interchangeably, but reactant specifies a ...
(made from
oak galls
Oak apple or oak gall is the common name for a large, round, vaguely apple-like gall commonly found on many species of oak. Oak apples range in size from in diameter and are caused by chemicals injected by the larva of certain kinds of gall ...
and
madeira wine
Madeira is a fortified wine made on the Portuguese Madeira Islands, off the coast of Africa. Madeira is produced in a variety of styles ranging from dry wines which can be consumed on their own, as an apéritif, to sweet wines usually consumed ...
) applied at Richard Gough's request, that he had hoped would make faded writing more legible. On-going research extends the number of regional case studies already carried out (Northwest England, North Norfolk coast).
The Gough Map in culture
A BBC television series ''In Search of Medieval Britain'' (2008) showed
Alixe Bovey
Alixe Bovey FSA (born 1974) is a Canadian medieval art historian and Dean and Deputy Director at the Courtauld Institute of Art, a college of the University of London. Her research has been chiefly concerned with pictorial narratives and their ...
retracing a series of journeys through Britain in the Middle Ages using the Gough Map.
In May 2011, the Gough Map was inscribed in
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
's
UK Memory of the World Register The UK Memory of the World Register is part of the Memory of the World Programme.
The UK Register recognises documentary heritage of outstanding importance to the UK. Any documentary heritage can be nominated in a biennial application process. The ...
.
[2011 UK Memory of the World Register]
, United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO, 2011. Accessed 4 June 2011.[Gough Map added to UNESCO’s UK Memory of the World Register]
", Linguistic Geographies: The Gough Map of Great Britain, 23 May 2011. Accessed 4 June 2011.[Bodleian items added to UNESCO's UK Memory of the World Register]
, Bodleian Libraries, 23 May 2011. Accessed 4 June 2011.
Online digitization
From April 2010 to July 2011 a research project funded by the UK AHRC Research Council's Beyond Text programme digitised and created a new online edition of the Gough Map. The edition was a collaboration between Keith Lilley at Queen's University Belfast, Nick Millea at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library Map Room, and Paul Vetch at the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London.
Notes
References
*Millea, Nick. ''The Gough Map: The Earliest Road Map of Great Britain?'' Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2007. {{ISBN, 9781851240227
External links
Linguistic Geographies: The Gough Map of Great Britain Includes an interactive and searchable edition of the Gough Map.
Explore the Gough Map Zoomable, searchable, high quality image of the Gough Map, suitable for all media (desktops, tablets and smart phones). A layer of all settlement names can be viewed, and other layers plot 14th century royal journeys.
Historic maps of Europe
Maps of the United Kingdom
14th-century maps
Bodleian Library collection