In this post, I plan to share some of the fabulous links I have discovered in regards to the layout of London during the Regency Era. Is this information complete? Not in a million years. However, those of you like me who are always searching for the “history” to place in our historical romance or historical mystery, will likely find it beneficial. If you have additional sites you would not mind sharing, add them in the comments below.

Many places considered in Town now were actually in the country then. Kew gardens, Richmond, Hampstead Heath, and many more commonly mentioned places in Regency historicals — anything more than twenty miles away — would definitely be out of city limits. London was the square mile plus of the banks and the Lord Mayor’s residence. Hyde Park and Mayfair were in Westminster. One could even drive from Town to the city and be away from fashionable places. Holyhead Road would lead from Hyde Park to the outskirts of London.

The Survey of London is a research project to produce a comprehensive architectural survey of central London and its suburbs, or the area formerly administered by the London County Council. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Robert Ashbee, an Arts-and-Crafts designer, architect and social reformer^[1] and was motivated by a desire to record and preserve London’s ancient monuments. The first volume was published in 1900, but the completion of the series remains far in the future.

The Survey consists of a series of volumes based mainly on the historical parish system. Each volume gives an account of the area, with sufficient general history to put the architecture in context, and then proceeds to describe the notable streets and individual buildings one by one. The accounts are exhaustive, reviewing all available primary sources in detail. The Survey devotes thousands of words to some buildings that receive the briefest of mentions in the Buildings of England series (itself a vast and detailed reference work by most standards). However, the earlier volumes largely ignored buildings built after 1800.

Due to the scale of the existing endeavour, there are no current plans to extend the project to take in the whole of Greater London. As of 2020, 53 volumes in the main series have been published. Separately, 18 monographs on individual buildings have been published. Most of the volumes have not been updated since publication, but those published online (up to Vol. 47) have received a limited amount of updating.

The Survey of London has extensive information about  the development of the streets and who lived there.

Survey of London: Whitechapel

London 1800-1913 (Lots of information can be found here on the Old Bailey Website – population, hinterlands, etc.

The Rookeries of London

South Kensington in Retrospect

These are just a few of the items available on the internet to start you on your search.

***************************************************************

Remember: Modern maps have A 5 where Regency maps would not. Traveling that particular road would take your characters out of town fairly quickly.

A5 road (Great Britain) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The section of the A5 between London and Shrewsbury is roughly contiguous with one of the principal Roman roads in Britain: that between Londinium and Deva, which diverges from the present-day A5 corridor at Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum) near Shrewsbury.

The Act of Union 1800, which unified Great Britain and Ireland, gave rise to a need to improve communication links between London and Dublin. A parliamentary committee led to an Act of Parliament of 1815 that authorised the purchase of existing turnpike road interests and, where necessary, the construction of new road, to complete the route between the two capitals. This made it the first major civilian state-funded road building project in Britain since Roman times.

In 1812, the Regent’s Canal Company was formed to cut a new canal from the Grand Junction Canal’s Paddington Arm to Limehouse, where a dock was planned at the junction with the Thames. The architect John Nash played a part in its construction, using his idea of ‘barges moving through an urban landscape’.

Completed in 1820, it was built too close to the start of the railway age to be financially successful and at one stage the Regent’s only narrowly escaped being turned into a railway. But the canal went on to become a vital part in southern England’s transport system.

The aristocrats lived in the West End — Mayfair — Westminster. Most of them apparently moved away from the water.

Jane Austen in Vermont suggests the following books on London.

1. Regency London, by Stella Margetson. New York: Praeger, 1971 [London: Cassell, 1971].

Margetson wrote a few novels but also a number of books of English social history especially of the late 18^th and the 19^th-century. This book on Regency London is a short introductory text that covers the basics, with black and white contemporary illustrations throughout:

1. Carlton House
2. The Mercantile City
3. Westminster and Government
4. The Regent and the Architect
5. High Society
6. Entertainment
7. The Artists and the Writers
8. The Populace
9. Some Visitors to London [Jane gets a few pages on her stays in London]
10. An Expanding City

The A to Z of Regency London, Introduction by Paul Laxton; index compiled by Joseph Wisdom. Lympne Castle, Kent: Harry Margary, in association with Guildhall Library, London, 1985.

This historical atlas is based on Richard Horwood’s survey of London in 1792-9 and updated by William Faden in 1813 – it shows the streets, lanes, courts, yards, and alleys, but also every individual building with its street number – the 40 sheets of the original Horwood have been photographically reduced, and the index for this edition expands the original by threefold.

The Horwood map is available online in various formats [a terrific one is here: https://www.romanticlondon.org/explore-horwoods-plan/#16/51.5112/-0.0747], but this is a treasure to have close at hand. One can easily trace Austen’s meanderings described in her letters, and follow the many characters in Sense and Sensibility – where they live, visit, and shop – her one novel where London is central to the plot (though it is also where the dilemma of Harriet gets sorted!)

For those of you who love maps, there are others to choose from in this series: The A to Z of Elizabethan London, Restoration London, Georgian London, Victorian London, and Edwardian London (there is also one for Georgian Dublin)

A book about Mayfair describes the squares where the wealthy lived.

Bankers and merchants might live within London, but I do not think it was a salubrious place to live by the Regency. They went to Vauxhall by boat, and many lived closer to the water outside of Mayfair and London.

Jane Austen in Vermont provides an extensive list of resources, though the post was last updated in 2016.

************************************************

Cary’s map provides a detailed view of London in 1818 when Dr. John Snow, the prominent epidemiologist and anesthesiologist, was five years old.  At that time he was living in York, England, not yet starting his elementary schooling.  The other large maps at this site, London in 1846 During John Snow and  John Snow’s London in 1859,  provides a similar view of the city, but at the middle and end of Dr. Snow’s illustrious life.  With print date of January 1, 1818, Cary’s map has 27 panels arranged in 3 rows of 9 panels, each measuring approximately 6 1/2 by 10 5/8 inches. The complete map measures 32 1/8 by 59 1/2 inches.

*******************************************

Below is link for a map of London from 1817, blocked off and blown up per section. It has been marked off with color to show boundaries. Darton’s New Plan Of The Cities Of London & Westminster, & Borough Of Southwark, 1817

From Mapco.net

The Map

Full Title:	An Entire New Plan Of The Cities Of London & Westminster, & Borough Of Southwark; The East & West India Docks, Regent’s Park, New Bridges, &c. &c. With The Whole Of The New Improvements Of The Present Time.
Publisher:	London. Published July 1st 1817 by W. Darton, Junr. 58 Holborn Hill.
Engraver:	Engraved by G. Alexander, Clarks Place, Islington. 1817.
Date:	July 1st 1817
Size:	91.8cm x 47.1cm (36″ x 18½”)
Scale:	3¾” : 1 statute mile
Extent:	Islington – West Ham Abbey Marsh – Walworth – Kensington Gardens
Description:	Folding map of Regency London. Hand-coloured sections, laid down on linen. Title at top right. Explanation and Scale at top left. Recorded as Howgego No. 268 (2).This map of London has been extended east by an extra sheet 17cm (6¾”) wide, extending the map from Stepney as far east as Greenwich Marsh. This is a highly decorative map, although it has some offsetting (transfer of the image from one part of the map to the other due to folding).The map illustrates proposals for the “Intended Markets” on the eastern side of Regent’s Park (which became the Cumberland & Clarence Markets); the Intended Docks east of London Docks; the location of the soon-to-be-constructed Regent Street, running from Oxford Street to Piccadilly; and many other proposed improvements. It also has nice detail of Kensington Gardens.