A very rare LARGE SCALE PLAN OF THE CITY OF YORK. The first plan of the city was placed as an inset of John Speed’s map of the West Riding of Yorkshire published in 1612. Speed had surveyed many of the cities he included himself. It was immediately adopted by Braun and Hogenburg in 1617, Rutger Hermannides (1660), Johann Cristoph Beer (1690), Vincenzo Coronelli (1706) and Pieter van der Aa (1729). A more up to date plan was printed by Thomas Gent in 1719, a local antiquary.

John Cossins (c.1697-1743) was a surveyor who practised in York. In 1993 a Sotheby’s auction offered for sale his notebook in which he notes subscriptions taken for his plan and sketches of the city. It now resides in the York City Archives. The plan of York was first published c.1727 and we have been unable to locate an example in any institution. One does survive in a private English collection. A second revised edition was published in 1748 of which this is an example. Even this is exceedingly rare and only the one example is recorded on Copac in the Kings Topographical Collection at the British Library. With the fascinating elevations of sixteen of the most recently built mansions illustrated down the sides. Below are four lines of descriptive text. The revisions for this state are the work of John Haynes, the author of an equally rare panorama of the city of 1731.

Cossins also published a city plan of Leeds issued somewhere between 1725 and 1730, none are recorded on Copac. Indeed the only example that could be traced is in the Leeds City Museum. Barron, R. ‘The Mapping of York’, in IMCoS Journal no. 35 pp. 23-9; Butler, R.M. ‘Plans and Views of York’ in IMCoS Journal 39 pp. 30-33; Freedman, Rita (1994) A Mapmaker’s Notebook: John Cossins c.1726-28 York Georgian Society Annual Report for 1994:8-22; Murray, Hugh ed. (1997) ‘Scarborough, York and Leeds, the Town Plans of John Cossins 1697-1743’ York Architectural and Archaeological Society.