Description:A review of digital images recorded during a survey of all known maps of Birmingham has revealed the only known printed copy of the first map in the world to show a steam-powered mill (reproduced here by kind permission of Warwick County Record Office).
Plan of Birmingham Thomas Hanson c.1781 WCRO CR1086/5
Known original copies of Thomas Hanson’s 1778 Plan of Birmingham, first advertised on 5 October 1778, were believed to survive in only three libraries and record offices. The, map originally at the large scale of 1:1911, has subsequently been reproduced in several compilations of Birmingham maps copies of which are more widely held.
A revision of this map, Plan of Birmingham Survey’d by Thos. Hanson 1781, was produced at a much reduced scale, 1:5308, [Map 174790] for inclusion in the first edition of William Hutton’s, An history of Birmingham, published in 1782.
The Library of Birmingham holds a rare surviving manuscript tracing of Thomas Hanson’s original 1778 Plan , used by the surveyor, it is presumed, to plot features added to the town subsequent to the 1778 survey. Although it shows the date ‘1778’, traced from the original map, it exhibits features that definitely postdate his 1778 Plan and others that, although they cannot yet be dated, appear on the printed reduced size 1781 Plan
Despite finding a 1781 advertisement for a ‘NEW and CORRECTED Impressions of the LARGE PLAN of the TOWN of BIRMINGHAM’,
[Pearson & Rollason] where now may be had, just Published, NEW and CORRECTED Impressions of the LARGE PLAN of the TOWN of BIRMINGHAM, Price 7s. 6d. PLAIN, or 10s.6d. COLOURED
the absence of any known surviving printed large scale plan dated 1781 led to the assumption that the manuscript tracing must have been produced as the survey for the small scale 1781 Plan. [MAP/174790]
A review of digital images recorded during a survey of all known maps of Birmingham held by libraries and record offices carried out on behalf of the Library of Birmingham Archives in 2013 has proved this assumption to be erroneous.
This issue of a printed map, titled Plan of Birmingham Survey’d by Thos. Hanson 1778 held at Warwick County Record Office [CR1086/5], shows all of the additional features [some of which are shown on the reduced scale 1781 Plan [Map 174790] ] but none of the omissions shown on the Library of Birmingham’s manuscript tracing [MAP/669826],.
It would appear that whoever was charged with engraving the revised map added all of the new features to the existing plate but avoided the difficult job of removing and replacing the date. [Removing a feature from a plate involved beating the plate from the rear until the feature was flattened, a difficult job, and then engraving the new feature.]
This was a not uncommon occurrence in the revision of late 18th century/early 19th century maps. The Library of Birmingham hold three separate issues of John Kempson’s Map of the Town and Parish of Birmingham, [MAP/384603; MAP174791 & MAP/14009] the first of which was advertised for sale on 15 April 1811 and last of which shows features that date the map to c.1820. All carry the same heading with the text Published April 1811.
This is the only known copy of a second issue of Thomas Hanson’s large-scale map. It is not of Birmingham in 1778, despite its printed title, but of Birmingham c.1781.