Contains twenty-two colour maps from John Ogilby’s 1675 and 1698 road atlas of England and Wales, titled Britannia. Each map contains multiple strips. Each strip represents a part of the road and the surrounding environment, with the top of one strip continued at the bottom of the strip next to it. The maps are numbered in the bottom right corner to indicate the proper order. Many of the maps are missing, and the remaining ones have been grouped together by their assigned number. The title of each map is surrounded by an illustration or decorative border. The maps note towns and counties as well as landscape features such as hills, rivers, bridges, some buildings such as churches and mills, notable side roads, and the relative size of towns. A 1970s reproduction of the complete 1675 atlas is available in Archives and Special Collections with the title “Ogilby's road maps of England and Wales from Ogilby's ‘Britannia’, 1675” (SPCL G 1808 O302 1971).

Ogilby’s atlas contains 100 strip road maps with a double-sided page of text with information on how to use the map, as well as details about the towns. The atlas was also notable for Ogilby’s scale of one inch to the mile, with each map containing measurements in miles and furlongs. This was an innovative practice at the time as many minor roads were measured using a locally defined mile rather than a standard mile of 1760 yards. Britannia was also issued in 1675 without the descriptive text pages and with plate numbers in the bottom right corner.

John Ogilby (1600-1676) was a Scottish translator, impresario, and cartographer. At the age of eleven, Ogilby was apprenticed to a dance master in London. By 1617 he was an accomplished dancer and teacher, although an injury in 1619 ended his career as a dancer. In 1633 Ogilby went to Ireland to serve as a dancing tutor to the wife and children of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Stafford. While in Ireland, he established its first theatre, the Werburgh Street Theatre. When the Irish Rebellion of 1641 forced the theatre’s closure, Ogilby learned Latin and translated the complete works of Virgil. He later learned Greek and translated some of Homer’s work as well.

In 1669 Ogilby began publishing a series of atlases of China, Japan, Africa, Asia, and America. In 1671 he proposed making a detailed survey and atlas of Great Britain. The King appointed him Royal Cosmographer and Ogilby began working on Britannia. In 1675, Ogilby’s first and only volume of Britannia was published, a road atlas of England and Wales. He died the following year.

Click here to view the Road Maps of England and Wales from the atlas Britannia, 1675, 1698 finding aid