The Gough Map or Bodleian Map is a map

Map

A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes....

 of the island of Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

, dating between 1355 and 1366, and is the oldest surviving route map of Great Britain. Its precise date of production and authorship are unknown. It is named after Richard Gough

Richard Gough (antiquarian)

Richard Gough was an English antiquarian.He was born in London, where his father was a wealthy M.P. and director of the British East India Company. In 1751 he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he began his work on British topography, published in 1768...

, who donated the map to the Bodleian Library

Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...

 in 1809. He is believed to have acquired the map from the collection of the late antiquarian "Honest Tom" Martin in 1774. Numerous copies of it have been made, with an interactive online version created at Queen's University, Belfast.

Dating of the map has been undertaken based on historical changes of place names and sizes. Gough believed the map to date from the reign of Edward III

Edward III of England

Edward III was King of England from 1327 until his death and is noted for his military success. Restoring royal authority after the disastrous reign of his father, Edward II, Edward III went on to transform the Kingdom of England into one of the most formidable military powers in Europe...

, but 19th-century scholarship suggested that it dated from c. 1300, during the reign of Edward I

Edward I of England

Edward I , also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. The first son of Henry III, Edward was involved early in the political intrigues of his father's reign, which included an outright rebellion by the English barons...

. The map is now generally believed to have been made within an eleven-year window, due to the ability to date some of its features. The earliest given date is deduced by the depiction of a city wall around Coventry

Coventry

Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...

, which was first constructed in 1355. The latter date is usually given as 1366, the year in which the town marked on the map as Sheppey was renamed Queenborough

Queenborough

Queenborough is a small town on the Isle of Sheppey in the Swale borough of Kent in South East England.Queenborough is two miles south of Sheerness. It grew as a port near the Thames Estuary at the westward entrance to The Swale where it joins the River Medway...

. Lexicographic evidence also suggests that it dates from the latter half of the 14th century. It is, however, believed that the map is based on an earlier version, made around 1280.

The map's authorship is also unknown. It is thought that much of the information about the map was gained from either one or more men who travelled around Great Britain as part of Edward I's military expeditions into Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 and Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. The areas of the map's fringe with the most accurate detail often correspond with those areas in which Edward's troops were present. The accuracy of the map in the South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It has a population of 1.29 million. It consists of four metropolitan boroughs: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and City of Sheffield...

 and Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

 areas suggest that the author could be from this region. However, it is also possible that the map was constructed based upon the collation of various people's local knowledge. For example, the cartographic accuracy in Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....

 could be explained by the fact that William Rede, Fellow of Merton College, had successfully calculated the geographic coordinates for Oxford in 1340.

The Gough Map is important due to its break with previous theologically-based mapping. It was the first to show the road network of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, though there are some notable and confusing omissions, such as large sections of Watling Street

Watling Street

Watling Street is the name given to an ancient trackway in England and Wales that was first used by the Britons mainly between the modern cities of Canterbury and St Albans. The Romans later paved the route, part of which is identified on the Antonine Itinerary as Iter III: "Item a Londinio ad...

. The use of numerals to indicate road distances in league

League (unit)

A league is a unit of length . It was long common in Europe and Latin America, but it is no longer an official unit in any nation. The league originally referred to the distance a person or a horse could walk in an hour...

s is unique in comparison to all other pre-17th century maps of Britain. It was also the first map to depict a recognisably accurate picture of Britain's coast, although the accuracy is much greater in England than in Scotland, at the time part of another kingdom

Kingdom of Scotland

The Kingdom of Scotland was a Sovereign state in North-West Europe that existed from 843 until 1707. It occupied the northern third of the island of Great Britain and shared a land border to the south with the Kingdom of England...

. Towns are shown in some detail, with London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and York

York

York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...

 written in gold lettering and other principal settlements illustrated in detail. Despite its accuracy, the map does contain a number of other errors. Notably, island

Island

An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...

s and lake

Lake

A lake is a body of relatively still fresh or salt water of considerable size, localized in a basin, that is surrounded by land. Lakes are inland and not part of the ocean and therefore are distinct from lagoons, and are larger and deeper than ponds. Lakes can be contrasted with rivers or streams,...

s such as Anglesey

Anglesey

Anglesey , also known by its Welsh name Ynys Môn , is an island and, as Isle of Anglesey, a county off the north west coast of Wales...

 and Windermere

Windermere

Windermere is the largest natural lake of England. It is also a name used in a number of places, including:-Australia:* Lake Windermere , a reservoir, Australian Capital Territory * Lake Windermere...

 are oversized, whilst the strategic importance of rivers is shown by their emphasis. Well known but geographically small features such as the Peninsula

The Bailey

The Bailey, or The Peninsula, is an historic area in the centre of Durham, England. It is shaped like a peninsula thanks to a sharp meander in the River Wear, formed by isostatic adjustment of the land. The name 'The Bailey' derives from it being the 'outer bailey' of the Norman motte and...

 in Durham

Durham

Durham is a city in north east England. It is within the County Durham local government district, and is the county town of the larger ceremonial county...

 are also overly-prominent. The map contains numerous references to mythology as if they were geographical fact, as illustrated by comments about Brutus

Marcus Junius Brutus

Marcus Junius Brutus , often referred to as Brutus, was a politician of the late Roman Republic. After being adopted by his uncle he used the name Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, but eventually returned to using his original name...

' mythical landings in Devon

Devon

Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

. Nevertheless, it remains the most accurate map of Britain prior to the 16th century.

A BBC television series In Search of Medieval Britain (2008) showed Alixe Bovey

Alixe Bovey

Alixe Bovey is a lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. Her research has been chiefly concerned with pictorial narratives and their cultural and literary context. She has also written on medieval monsters...

 retracing a series of journeys through Britain in the Middle Ages using the Gough Map.

In May 2011, the Gough Map was inscribed in UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

's UK Memory of the World Register

UK Memory of the World Register

The UK Memory of the World Register, on which work started in 2009 and whose first inscriptions were made in 2010, is a list of individual documents and documentary collections of particular importance to the United Kingdom; it is the national complement to UNESCO's international Memory of the...

.

From April 2010 - July 2011 a research project funded by the UK AHRC Research Council's Beyond Text programme digitised and created a new online edition of the Gough Map. The edition was a collaboration between Keith Lilley at Queen's University Belfast, Nick Millea at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library Map Room, and Paul Vetch at the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London.

External links

• Linguistic Geographies: The Gough Map of Great Britain. Includes an interactive and searchable edition of the Gough Map.
• Interactive Gough Map at GEOID website
• The Gough Map of Great Britain from the Bodleian Library Map Room website