Wonderground Map of London Town

Published in 1914, By Paying Us Your Pennies – or the Wonderground Map of London Town, as this cartographic icon became known – presents a bird’s eye view of the capital peopled with characters from every walk of life making whimsical quips or puns about road or place names: *Men hurl hams in Hurlingham *In Earls Court ‘the Earl’s caught!’ *A colourful serpent has taken up residence in the Serpentine. Despite its chevrons and heraldic borders, it clearly presents a contemporary portrait of London with its motor cars and B-Type buses and a state-of-the-art monoplane looping the loop in the skies above. Press reports of the time claimed that 'People spend so long looking at this map – they miss their trains yet go on smiling' (Daily Sketch, May 1914). Various retail editions were published in the following years, while map-makers across the world were inspired to create 'Wonder' maps of their own cities including Melbourne, Mexico City and Barcelona.

Date

1915

Mapmaker / publisher

MacDonald Gill

Place

the London Underground

Archive

Wikimedia Commons

Type

map

Original size

2,353 × 1,821 pixels

Need maps for a whole project? Add Find Any Map to Claude and ask for this one by its id: 293178.