Here’s a quick one for the Lichfield historical buffs: John Snape’s map of the city and it’s environs, from 1781. This really is a wonderful work of art, and bears poring over.

If you’re into Lichfield’s fascinating and long history, check out the great Lichfield Lore Blog – quirky, funny and well turned out in a nice grey cardi. What’s not to love?

Lots of fragments and low quality versions of this are available online: here’s the complete document in big-res glory, scanned from a reproduction.

Snape was an interesting man, with many local connections. The excellent Grace’s guide to British Industrial History says this about the man:

John Snape (1737-1816) was a surveyor and worked on mapping towns (Birmingham, Lichfield and Walsall) and canals. He surveyed the land for the Birmingham Canals in 1782 and in 1783 he became a member of the Society of Civil Engineers. In 1785 he and Samuel Bull surveyed the land for an extension to the Birmingham Canal to Dudley. In 1789 he mapped the Worcester and Birmingham Canal with Josiah Clowes. He worked on the Grand Junction Canal in 1802 and on improvements on the Birmingham Canal in 1805. In 1808 he surveyed the Walsall Canal.

I think this sits quite well with other old maps available here such as the Yates Staffordshire map of 1798 and Smith map of 1801.

Please fill your boots, and if you spot anything interesting, please shout. Bear in mind these are large images and will take a while to download.

A real historic work of art. Kindly scanned with the assistance of top local history wonk Howmuch? Click for a larger version. It’s quite big, so be patient.

John Snape 1781 Lichfield map, PDF version – 5.4 megabytes.