Locating London's Past

We are pleased to announce the launch of a substantially updated version of Locating London's Past, the website which allows you to map a wide body of digital resources pertaining to early modern and eighteenth-century London onto John Rocque's 1746.

A screenshot of the website showing a digital map of London in the 18th century with red highlights over certain areas

91Ö±²¥ the project

Locating London's Past is a GIS interface that enables researchers to map and visualize textual and artefactual data relating to seventeenth and eighteenth-century London. The famous 18th century map of London, John Rocque's 1746 map, has been cross referenced with the first Ordnance Survey map of the city, the OS map 1869-80. Users can access the geographically-referenced data sources about society in 18th century London life.

The upgrade 

The site has been completely rebuilt, in the process correcting a number of small errors in the original implementation, and it is much more user-friendly.  The enhancements allow more comprehensive mapping of the data than was possible on the original site, and we have substantially increased the number of place names from the Old Bailey Online and London Lives which are mappable.  For a full list of the changes, go to .  

Thanks to the team

Funded by the London Topographical Society, the project was led by Professor Bob Shoemaker and Professor Tim Hitchcock. The development work was undertaken by the DHI's Jamie McLaughlin (Senior Research Software Engineer), Sharon Howard (Data Manager) and Louise Falcini (additional geocoding).