Description:A New Plan of Birmingham Exhibiting its present state & progressive increase was first published in the first edition of James Drake’s The Picture of Birmingham in 1825. The various colours, which purport to show the extent of the town in the time of: invasion by Julius Ceasar - purple, the Norman Conquest -pink & the Restoration –blue, are based on William Hutton’s conjectures. Those for 1731 - yellow & 1781 – green are more reliable being based on known maps..
New Plan of Birmingham Surveyor unknown 1825 MAL.65455
A NEW PLAN OF Birmingham Exhibiting its present state & progressive increase, published by James Drake, 123, New Street, Birmingham, 1825. Engraved by T. Simms, Birmingham first appeared as a folded map in James Drake’s Picture of Birmingham, published in 1825, the town’s second guidebook. It’s scale and alignment match those of Birmingham in the Year 1819 from Charles Pye’s A Description of Modern Birmingham, the first guidebook. It has every appearance of being based on Kempson’s town maps, including the tell-tale omission of Sheep Street.
On the same scale as Kempson’s town plans it has 58o west of north at the top and covers a slightly larger area [3.24km wide by 3.8 km high] centred in roughly the same place [between the north-east corner of St Philip’s and Colmore Row] but having no border the concept of area covered and centre are less distinct.
It shows the Library on temple Row and the Newsroom on the corner of Waterloo Street and Bennets Hill, as does Pigott Smitth’s map. The Panorama on New Street now houses the Academy, forerunner of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. The [Mount] Zion chapel, built in 1824, is shown on Graham Street. The [Free] School is shown for the first time on Park street despite the fact that it opened in 1791.
Summer Street is shown running south from Summer Lane but not quite reaching New Town Row and the part of Tower Street which runs between Summer Lane and New Town Row is here called Lower Tower Street. A small passageway connecting Crooked Lane and Bull Street, not seen on any previous map since Westley’s map of 1731, is labelled Bear Yard.
A very simplified version of Gibson’s canal arm is shown but this bears no resemblance to the rough image on Josiah Robins map or to the more detailed survey of Pigott Smith.
The plan uses coloured shading to show the growth of the town: pre-Roman – purple; 1066 – pink; 1661 – blue; 1731 – yellow & 1781 – green. With regard to the first three conjectural town limits taken from Hutton it would be wiser to rely on George Demidowicz’s conjectural plan for 12961 and Joseph Hill’s conjectural plan for 15532..
1• Demidowicz, George, Medieval Birmingham: the borough rentals of 1296 and 1344-5, Dugdale Society Ocassional Papers, 48, 2008.
2• Survey of the Borough and Manor, or Demesne Foreign, of Birmingham, made in ... 1553 [by Clement Throkmorton]. Translated from the original document ... in the Public Record Office by W.B. Bickley. With notes and an introduction by Joseph Hill, and a conjectural plan of Birmingham at that time., 1891, Birmingham