2778 12s. And then he guessed that around £ 2500 annually would be sufficient, over a period of six to eight years. He effectively promised George III that the nation could be given its first complete, accurate map for a sum in the region of £ 15,000– £ 20,000 (roughly between £ 1 million and £ 1.5 million today), and in the space of less than a decade. But his proposal was knocked back, probably on account of cost, combined with political apathy in the midst of a period of peace. Nevertheless, Roy’s ‘Considerations’ were the first viable proposal for a national mapping agency in Great Britain. It was a momentous document, on which its creator considered that ‘the honour of the nation’ depended. Roy was certain that, when a national survey came into being, it would be executed by military map-makers.
The rejection of Roy’s proposal did not mean that the progress of cartography had ground to a halt in Britain. A number of citizens from a variety of backgrounds turned their attention to map-making in the second half of the eighteenth century, and when the Ordnance Survey was finally established in 1791 it would owe much to these innovators, as well as to its more obvious military progenitors.
O N 22 M ARCH 1754 a small group of ‘Noblemen, Clergy, Gentlemen, & Merchants’ met at Rawthmell’s coffee-house on Henrietta Street inLondon, between Covent Garden and the Strand. Amid the chatter of Rawthmell’s comfortable surroundings, these men brought into being the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. (In 1847 the Society was given a royal charter and became the Royal Society of Arts, a name it retains to this day.) Designed to encourage the application of those disciplines to the public good, the Society of Arts soon attracted a host of eminent members, including the charismatic botanist Joseph Banks, the furniture maker Thomas Chippendale, the future statesman Benjamin Franklin, the actor David Garrick, the musicologist Charles Burney, the writers Oliver Goldsmith and Laurence Sterne, the artist William Hogarth and the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson. What a ‘Virtuoso Tribe of Arts and Sciences!’ the Marquess of Rockingham exclaimed.
The Society of Arts was initially focused on ‘the Encouragement of Boys and Girls in the Art of Drawing, [which] is necessary in many Employments, Trade and Manufactures’, on the basis that ‘the Encouragement thereof may prove of great Utility to the Public’. Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, opened the sculpture gallery at his mansion at Goodwood in West Sussex to enthusiastic young painters who needed somewhere to practise their skills. The Society’s fervour was partly patriotic: its members wanted to turn London into a rival to Paris, ‘a Seat of Arts, as it is now of Commerce, inferior to none in the Universe’. The Society of Arts offered incentives, ‘premiums’, in the form of healthy sums of money or medals to those who successfully met its challenges. And in 1759 its members set their sights on another practical application of art: map-making.
In the early 1750s, a Cornish antiquarian and naturalist called William Borlase had become aggravated at the shortcomings of the maps he was using. Borlase wrote frustrated letters to a friend, challenging him to deny ‘whether the state of British Geography be not very low, and at present wholly destitute of any public encouragement. Our Maps of England and its counties are extremely defective,’ he grumbled. The recipient of Borlase’s letters was Henry Baker, a fellow antiquarian and naturalist, and a founding member of the Society of Arts. Borlase persuaded Baker to make the lamentable state of British map-making a priority for the Society. ‘’Tis to be wished, that somepeople of weight would, when a proper opportunity offers, hint the necessity of such Survey,’ he wheedled, suggesting that
if among your premiums for Drawings some reward were offered for
The rejection of Roy’s proposal did not mean that the progress of cartography had ground to a halt in Britain. A number of citizens from a variety of backgrounds turned their attention to map-making in the second half of the eighteenth century, and when the Ordnance Survey was finally established in 1791 it would owe much to these innovators, as well as to its more obvious military progenitors.
O N 22 M ARCH 1754 a small group of ‘Noblemen, Clergy, Gentlemen, & Merchants’ met at Rawthmell’s coffee-house on Henrietta Street inLondon, between Covent Garden and the Strand. Amid the chatter of Rawthmell’s comfortable surroundings, these men brought into being the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. (In 1847 the Society was given a royal charter and became the Royal Society of Arts, a name it retains to this day.) Designed to encourage the application of those disciplines to the public good, the Society of Arts soon attracted a host of eminent members, including the charismatic botanist Joseph Banks, the furniture maker Thomas Chippendale, the future statesman Benjamin Franklin, the actor David Garrick, the musicologist Charles Burney, the writers Oliver Goldsmith and Laurence Sterne, the artist William Hogarth and the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson. What a ‘Virtuoso Tribe of Arts and Sciences!’ the Marquess of Rockingham exclaimed.
The Society of Arts was initially focused on ‘the Encouragement of Boys and Girls in the Art of Drawing, [which] is necessary in many Employments, Trade and Manufactures’, on the basis that ‘the Encouragement thereof may prove of great Utility to the Public’. Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, opened the sculpture gallery at his mansion at Goodwood in West Sussex to enthusiastic young painters who needed somewhere to practise their skills. The Society’s fervour was partly patriotic: its members wanted to turn London into a rival to Paris, ‘a Seat of Arts, as it is now of Commerce, inferior to none in the Universe’. The Society of Arts offered incentives, ‘premiums’, in the form of healthy sums of money or medals to those who successfully met its challenges. And in 1759 its members set their sights on another practical application of art: map-making.
In the early 1750s, a Cornish antiquarian and naturalist called William Borlase had become aggravated at the shortcomings of the maps he was using. Borlase wrote frustrated letters to a friend, challenging him to deny ‘whether the state of British Geography be not very low, and at present wholly destitute of any public encouragement. Our Maps of England and its counties are extremely defective,’ he grumbled. The recipient of Borlase’s letters was Henry Baker, a fellow antiquarian and naturalist, and a founding member of the Society of Arts. Borlase persuaded Baker to make the lamentable state of British map-making a priority for the Society. ‘’Tis to be wished, that somepeople of weight would, when a proper opportunity offers, hint the necessity of such Survey,’ he wheedled, suggesting that
if among your premiums for Drawings some reward were offered for
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