The two-sheet reduction by John Adams of his own great wall map of England and Wales from 1677, the first ‘straight-line’ distance map to be published. Adams was from Shropshire and after moving to London became a barrister in the Inner Temple. It seems that for a while at least he flourished as a surveyor or civil engineer from circa 1672 to 1688. In this career he saw the need for a large distance map of the market towns of England and Wales. The stimulus for this was a meeting with fisherman whereby Adams plotted the market towns within 100 miles of his port. On returning to London, he produced a draft in a similar manner of the whole of England and Wales. With the help of Gregory King, a fine 12-sheet map was published in 1677. King had helped John Ogilby in the production of his own road atlas entitled ‘Britannia’ and would provide much of the figures for this work. Adams would go on to approach the Royal Society in 1681 with plans for a complete triangulated survey of the country which came to nothing.

The is the first published reduction of Adam’s wall map and was advertised in the ‘London Gazette’ in July 1679. It stated ‘Mr. Adams of the Inner-Temple, having formerly published a new large Map of England … hath now contracted the same into two Imperial sheets of paper’. The map is a faithful reduction with four ornamental cartouches one surmounted by the Royal Coat of Arms. This example lacking the running title across the top and side panels no doubt was originally bound in an atlas by Philip Lea. Shirley recorded three states of this map, all extremely rare. To that a fourth was added when we discovered a much later state with the imprint of John and Thomas Bowles which dated from circa 1735. The main alteration in these states is the King’s dedication; Charles II is followed by James II, William III, and finally George II. Intermediate states may yet be discovered. Provenance: private English Collection. DNB; Heawood (1932) ‘John Adams and his Map of England’, in ‘Geographical Journal’; Ravenhill (1978) ‘John Adams his Map of England, its Projection, and his “Index Villaris” of 1680’, in ‘Geographical Journal’; Ravenhill (1981) ‘Projections for the Large General Maps of Britain, 1583-1700’, in ‘Imago Mundi’ 33 pp. 21-32, refer to pp. 26-7; Shirley (1991) Adams 2.3.