Joel Gascoyne

Joel Gascoyne (bap. 1650—c. 1704) was an English nautical chartmaker, land cartographer and surveyor who set new standards of accuracy and pioneered large scale county maps. After achieving repute in the Thames school of chartmakers, he switched careers and became one of the leading surveyors of his day and a maker of land maps. He is best known for his maps of: the colonial Province of Carolina; of the county of Cornwall; and of the early 18th-century Parish of Stepney, precursor of today's East End of London. Gascoyne's distinctive style of chart and map-drawing was characterised by the use of bold and imaginative cartouches.
Origins.
Born into a seafaring family prominent in the port of Hull, Yorkshire, Joel Gascoyne was baptised at Holy Trinity Church on 31 October 1650. His father Thomas was a sea captain. At 18 Gascoyne was apprenticed for seven years to John Thornton, citizen and draper of London, a leading member of the Thames chartmakers.
The Thames school of chartmakers.
The Thames school of chartmakers was a small group who plied their trade in streets and alleys leading down to the waterfront on the north Bank of the Thames, east of the Tower of London. Active between 1590 and 1740, they were critically involved in England's maritime affairs, yet the school was not identified by modern scholars until 1959.
"At the Signe of the Platt".
Its existence was revealed by Spanish historian of science Ernesto García Camarero, who examined a number of 17th-century English charts and noticed some common features. He described them as portolan charts with windrose networks (see illustration). They bore the legend "at the Signe of the Platt" with addresses in or near the Port of London. They were hand-drawn on vellum, pasted to four hinged rectangular boards. They did not employ Mercator's projection — conservative English seamen did not trust this innovation — but they were corrected for magnetic declination. No attempt was made to show inland features such as rivers or mountains, nor political or human symbols. They had (wrote García Camarero) a certain unfussy unity of style:
The word "platt" (a variant of plot) meant a chart. "The signe of the platt" was a signboard that hung outside a chartmaker's shop. University of Kansas scholar Thomas R. Smith discovered a number of these men were members of the Drapers' Company, a guild of the City of London, and from its records he and Tony Campbell derived trees of master-and-apprentice relations spanning 125 years.
One particular chain of teaching was John Daniell → Nicholas Comberford → John Burston → John Thornton → Joel Gascoyne, all of whom were important enough to have left charts that survive today, a rare thing for the period.
Significance.
The English came late to the art of oceanic navigation, the rudiments of which they learned from the Portuguese and (especially during the marriage of Mary Tudor and Philip II of Spain) the Spanish Their charts were lacking and they needed to catch up.
Faced with new discoveries, the Portuguese and Spanish governments attempted to institutionalise their cartography by setting up state controlled houses. The "Casa da Mina" (in Lisbon) and the "Casa de Contratación" (in Seville) had hydrographic offices that were ordered to build up gigantic, secret, master charts: the first maps of empire. Astronomers and other experts were set to work. The two casas were Europe's first scientific institutions. A key purpose was to standardise knowledge "so that errors and inconsistencies among charts could be eliminated and they could be revised and updated as new discoveries were made".
The task — coordinating local observations into a coherent knowledge space — turned out to be too difficult for the science of the day, and was gradually abandoned. Nevertheless the two Iberian powers held funds of local knowhow far exceeding that available to others.
David W. Waters said that By 1640 the English had charted all the world's known seas and coasts and were self-sufficient.
It was the business of the Thames chartmakers to make charts with useful information, and this was obtained from any available source including espionage. Unlike the Stationers' Guild (who had a monopoly of printing and applied a common law of copyright), in the Drapers Company copying was commonplace.
There is some evidence that chartmaking was not a lucrative occupation. The best published charts were Dutch, so these were heavily copied. However, few good Dutch charts of North America could be obtained, so the Thames chartmakers were obliged and stimulated to evolve original works: "The English made maps because they had to", wrote Jeanette D. Black.
Likewise for voyages to find the Northwest or Northeast Passage, or to Guiana or the Amazon basin. Prior to any of these was England's first maritime discovery, the White Sea route to Russia. In time, English chartmamers came to be dominant as the Dutch had been.
One assessment:
Thames school charts.
"Beautiful to the modern eye", wrote Alaistair Maeer, and made with colourful scales and intricate compass roses, in other respects early Thames school charts were plain and unadorned, concentrating on the practical business of navigating. In sharp contrast to their Continental counterparts, they did not depict missionaries, "heraldic markers, animals, trees, local inhabitants, and villages". For Maeer, the contrast was striking, and his explanation was that the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch charts of the era were produced at the behest of state-sponsored institutions who routinely projected religious or political symbols asserting dominion and mastery. The Thames school charts, however, were not a product of government oversight; and imperial aggrandisement was not yet a motivation for English voyagers, who saw the world in terms of opportunities for buying and selling.
Some chartmakers of the Thames school
Later, as England came into conflict with other European powers, imperial rivalries developed. These were reflected in the style of the later Thames school. "English charting began to exhibit dominion and empire, thereby mirroring Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch charts".
Some charts of the later Thames school
John Thornton, Gascoyne's teacher.
In binding his son apprentice to John Thornton, Thomas Gascoyne had selected an unusual master. Thornton, "the most competent and distinguished chart-maker in England" was also a surveyor and an engraver. So far as is known, it was in England a unique combination of skills.
Thornton worked in the Minories just outside the City limits. He was hydrographer to the East India Company and the Hudson's Bay Company; Monique de la Roncière called him "the celebrated English hydrographer".
Part of John Thornton's output was hand-drawn. Charts, in the hands of seamen, wore out in use or, becoming obsolete, were cannibalised for the sake of the vellum. Probably, most existing Thornton specimens would have perished had not French privateers captured an East Indiaman with her complement of charts: they were preserved for posterity in the Service Hydrographique de la Marine.
Because Thornton was also an engraver, however, a good part of his surviving output was printed, despite the Stationers' legal monopoly. Printing was done from engraved copper plates, an art he taught to Joel Gascoyne. It was seldom undertaken except for long print runs, because engraved copper plates were expensive to make. According to de la Roncière, Thornton made notable contributions, "above all "The English Pilot The Third Book describing the sea coasts. . . in the Oriental Navigation", a precious collection of thirty-five charts with sailing-directions"
Joel Gascoyne, master chartmaker.
In 1675 Gascoyne set up in business for himself at "Ye Signe of ye Platt neare Wapping Old Stayres three doares below ye Chapell" (), taking apprentices of his own and producing manuscript and engraved charts.
He acquired such fame that his counsel was twice sought by administrator of the Navy Samuel Pepys and his services were commissioned by the proprietors of the colony of Carolina.
Amongst Gascoyne's early works were four engraved Mediterranean charts published in John Seller's "English Pilot" (1677).
In 1678 Gascoyne drew on vellum for Captain John Smith a coloured portolan chart pasted on four hinged oak boards; the western half survives at the National Maritime Museum Greenwich. Coming to the attention of the Lords Proprietors of the province of Carolina, he was commissioned to engrave a map of their province (1682) from the latest surveys; their intention was to attract immigrants to the new colony.
The Mediterranean.
From Seller's "The English Pilot" (David Rumsey Map Collection).
The English revolution; career change.
Increasing competition from printed charts squeezed profits in the chart industry.
In October 1688 died Gascoyne's influential patron the Duke of Albemarle, governor of Jamaica, leaving Gascoyne at a disadvantage.
On 11 December, King James II fled London when popular support for his government collapsed, ushering in the Glorious Revolution.
The next day, just a few yards from Gascoyne's shop at Wapping Old Stairs, a vengeful crowd seized Judge Jeffreys, who was trying to flee the country in disguise; Jeffreys was taken into protective custody.
In 1689 Gascoyne ceased to be an active member of the Drapers Company and took up land surveying. The pursuit of this new career sometimes gave him the collateral opportunity to make large scale maps.
Estate surveyor.
In 1692 Gascoyne was engaged to map Sayes Court, Deptford, the property of diarist John Evelyn. It was a prestigious commission, for in matters of gardening Evelyn was a trendsetter for country gentlemen, and at Sayes Court he created a beautiful home and garden.
The next year the revolutionary government of William and Mary directed Gascoyne to survey the manor of Greenwich preparatory to instituting a home for retired sailors: Greenwich Hospital. Thus Gascoyne had established himself as one of the leading land-surveyors of the day.
For the next six years he was away in Cornwall (see below), but on his return he was commissioned to survey several estates, including Enfield Chase and the manor of Great Hasely.
Land surveying in Gascoyne's day.
The instruments and techniques available to Gascoyne were rudimentary by today's standards. Theodolite-type instruments of his time used pointers, somewhat like the sights used on firearms; sighting telescopes with crosshairs, though invented, were not in use. Hence, angle measuremens were not very accurate. A standard textbook of Gascoyne's day asserted that which to a modern surveyor seemed incredibly bad. Measuring chains were not corrected for temperature. For longer distances a measuring wheel called a perambulator (see illustration) was used.
Estate surveyors were disliked by farmers and tenants, who might refuse them access, wrote Eva Taylor:
The Cornish maps.
Though there is no direct historical record of it, map historian William Ravenhill showed that in 1693 Gascoyne was lured to Cornwall to survey the landholdings of two powerful families: those of John Grenville, first Earl of Bath, and Charles Robartes, second Earl of Radnor. Grenville had fought for the Royalists in the English Civil War, accompanying the future Charles II into exile; the Robartes family had fought for the Parliamentarians.
The Grenvilles had been Lords of the Manors of Kilkhampton and Bideford since the 11th century. Their seat was at Stowe House, which Grenville had rebuilt on a magnificent scale. He now wanted a surveyor to measure and plot his whole estate. Grenville had political connections with the colonial proprietors of Carolina and must have been familiar with Gascoyne's map of that country.
In contrast, the Robartes had made their fortune in trade, originally by selling furze to tin miners — for fuel. They got their first peerage by paying a £10,000 bribe to the Duke of Buckingham (though they protested it was extortion). They invested their trading profits in moneylending at high rates of interest, taking mortgages as security. When the borrowers defaulted, the Robartes foreclosed and took possession. Thus their landholdings, though amounting to 40,000 acres, were scattered all over Cornwall. The Robartes' seat was Lanhydrock House. Charles Robartes had boundary disputes with other Cornish landowners, who accused him of landgrabbing. He needed to survey his many and scattered estates.
It gave Gascoyne the collateral opportunity to survey all over the county, hence to make his great one-inch map on his own account.
The one-inch map of the county of Cornwall.
On March 27, 1699 Gascoyne issued a broadsheet addressed to the nobility and gentry of the county of Cornwall inviting them to subscribe to his map, which was nearly finished.
His map is on a scale of very nearly one inch to the mile, unprecedented for the era, and not equalled by the Ordnance Survey until their Kent map of 1801. Gascoyne's map measures about when mounted. Into this space he mapped a mass of detail:
In "Joel Gascoyne, a Pioneer of Large-Scale County Mapping", William Ravenhill said that Cornwall was the first county to be mapped on a large scale. Even 50 years later, only a handful had been.
Accuracy.
When tested with a modern Ordnance Survey map, the accuracy of Gascoyne's interpoint distances is so consistently good as to be surprising. How he managed to achieve such field measurements with the instruments of his day has not been explained. He must, at least, have used a system of carefully surveyed triangles, a procedure that was not standard until the late 18th century.
His map includes lines of latitude and their graduations (longitude he prudently omitted ). These, however, contain a curious systematic error. While fairly accurate near the Lizard, the values tend to be overstated the further one goes north — so consistently as to suggest the map-maker was erroneously taking the length of a minute of arc to be a statute mile, instead of a geographical mile as it really is. Ravenhill suspected the fault lay with John Harris the engraver, who would have added the latitude and grid lines afterwards.
Format.
An innovation was the mapping of parish boundaries. Parishes were local government units, hence it was important to know the limits of their jurisdiction. Gascoyne mapped 201 parishes. Observed Professor Ravenhill: The printed gazetteer lists 2,475 placenames, mostly classified by parish, and with grid references.
Gentlemen who subscribed could have their names engraved under their family seats; 98 did so.
Production.
Gascoyne's map was printed from seven engraved copper plates, plus six pages of letterpress for the gazetteer of placenames. A finished map would consist of six rectangular sheets mounted on cloth.
The copper plate process was laborious. Large copper sheets were difficult to obtain. After engraving a sheet, which was done in 'mirror' writing with a sharp steel rod called a burin, it was heated and very carefully inked, then put through a rolling press — which worked on the mangle principle — together with a damp sheet of paper at great pressure. Optionally, patrons could have the map coloured by hand, for which an additional charge was customary.
Modern re-publication.
In 1991 the Devon and Cornwall Record Society published a facsimile edition of Gascoyne's map. By this time only three copies of the original map could be found, two of them in museums but in unsuitable condition, the third privately owned by a Cornish architect, who loaned it to the publishers. The production comes in a boxed set with 12 map sheets on the original scale, a key map on a reduced scale, and scholarly commentaries.
The Stowe and Lanhydrock atlases.
The Stowe Atlas is a survey of the Grenville properties. "Beautiful", it comprises 33 hand-drawn maps on vellum, bound in a black leather volume, tooled in gold. For a long time the Stowe Atlas was unknown to historians, but it reappeared in the 20th century and is now in Kresen Kernow the Cornish public archives.
The Lanhydrock Atlas is a survey of the Robartes properties. It comprises four large volumes, bound in leather, containing 258 manuscript maps on vellum. In 2010 a one-volume edition — with all the maps plus scholarly commentaries — was published on behalf of the National Trust.
Because the maps in both atlases, though fairly obviously by the same author, are unsigned, they were thought to be the work of a local Cornish surveyor. However, William Ravenhill, the historian of cartography who deeply studied the maps of Gascoyne, made the correct attribution. Not only were the place-names too Anglicised for a Cornishman, the elaborate compass roses and colourful cartouches were typical of Joel Gascoyne's work, as was the maritime flavour. Furthermore, by paying attention to Gascoyne's known patrons, Professor Ravenhill was able to suggest why Gascoyne came to be working for Grenville and Robartes in the first place, a fact which had not been suspected.
Writing of the Lanhydrock Atlas, Fiona Reynolds said: while Oliver Padel said:
The parish of St Dunstan Stepney, the incipient East End of London.
Significance.
The population booms of the 19th and early 20th centuries made the East End of London a byword for overcrowding and overbuilding. Despite this, much of its earlier history can be recovered thanks to Gascoyne's splendid maps of the area.
The area: the need for a map.
The medieval parish of St Dunstan's, Stepney was an area of 7 square miles lying between the wall of the City of London and the River Lea to the east, where Essex began. It was mostly open fields or marshland. In Gascoyne's day it was still largely intact, though four settlements had been hived off and given inedependent status. It was still predominately farmland, except up against the City, where it was "pestered" by houses, often illegally built, and along the densely built river front — London's rapidly growing maritime area, known as Sailor Town. By the end of the 19th century the area would have a million people and be better known as the East End of London.
Hence by 1700 the parish needed to be surveyed for practical purposes. The local government, known as the Vestry, was responsible for a host of functions — the relief of poverty, highways, law and order, vagrants, the oversight of charities — and the collection of taxes to pay for these things. Taxes were levied on land occupation. In 1702 they decided to commission "some skilful Geographer or Plattmaker" to map the parish, its hamlets and their boundaries. They chose Joel Gascoyne.
The challenge.
John Strype writing thirteen years later described Stepney as "rather a Province than a Parish",
While the parish of Stepney was much smaller (and flatter) then Cornwall, the map was to be on a bigger scale (1:5,550, or about 11 inches to the mile), and to depict fine urban detail, because its fiscal purpose was to show tax-liable properties, such as fields, terraces and stand-alone houses, and even courts and alleys.
Professor Ravenhill, who wrote an introduction to a modern edition of Gascoyne's map, referred to the danger of surveying in "the often squalid and congested purlieus of late seventeenth-century London where the welcome accorded to seemingly inquisitive surveyors could have been anything but warm and co-operative. It is in the surveying of the detail of these courts and alleys that Joel Gascoyne would have met his most testing problems..."
The parish contained 9 or 10 scattered hamlets, known as the Tower hamlets (because, originally, they had had a feudal obligation to supply men to guard the Tower of London). From London, two ancient main roads ran across the parish: 
Ribbon development along these routes accounted for most of the housing.
Apart from his main map of the parish, Gascoyne was independently commissioned to map three individual hamlets: Limehouse, Mile End Old Town, and Bethnal Green.
The Limehouse map was on a scale of 1:2,376, or nearly 27 inches to the mile. By way of comparison, the Ordnance Survey did not survey an English town until 1843, and did not make 25-inch maps of any part of the country until 1853.
Joel Gascoyne's Stepney.
Some fragments of Gascoyne's vanishing Stepney lasted long enough to be captured by artists, or even to survive to this day. These buildings can be found on his maps.
The centre.
In the middle of the parish, standing in cow-grazed fields, was the church. Founded in Anglo-Saxon times, it was dedicated to St Dunstan, who was Bishop of London in AD 958. High-status individuals had country estates in early Stepney and a number are buried im its churchyard, as are many sea captains. For some reason it acquired a reputation for facetious epitaphs; for example—
Known as the Church of the High Seas, it had a strong maritime connection; legal textbooks said "A British man-of-war is, by a legal fiction, always a part of the parish of Stepney". Its bells feature in the children's song "Oranges and Lemons".
Joel Gascoyne's 1703 parish of Stepney map (extract)
This specimen shows that Gascoyne depicts every individual field, with the name of its owner (i.e. the taxpayer). Where space does not permit him to name a significant feature, he uses a numeral referenced to a table.
The indicates the parish church. It had both a rector and a vicar. The rectory is depicted as a row of gables just to the east of the church.
The road running northwest from the church ("Mile End Green") is today Stepney Green.
"King John's Court" is a little way up this road, marked '2' by Gascoyne (requires magnification).
No. 37 Stepney Green is about three-quarters of the way up the road, under the word 'Nicolson'.
Dean Colet's house is marked "Belonging to Paul School" (which he founded).
Nearly opposite to that, also marked "2", is "the Mercers Almes Houses"
The numerous bowling greens reflect the leisure character of the area. An "astonishing" number of houses in Mile End Town, a little to the north, were licensed to sell liquor. But, in general, the neighbourhood was a retirement village, inhabited by "rich Citizens and Sea-Captains".
Mile End Old Town was noted for its numerous almshouses. The charitable use of the area is further shown by the field for the support of "Poor of Criplegate";and, to its left, numeral "9", denoting "Jews' Burial Place".
Spitalfields and Mile End.
A. Another extract from Gascoyne's map of the parish of Stepney, showing the built up area of Spitalfields. Building near to London was theoretically illegal, so unauthorised dwellings were hidden away in back gardens or courts. Into these tightly packed habitations French (and other) refugees crowded.
Despite this, "[Gascoyne's] blocks are not mere diagrams but real houses", wrote David Johnson. The indicates Spitalfields Market with its central cruciform building surrounded by market stalls "carefully individualised by Gascoyne".
B. Cartouche from Gascoyne's map of Mile End Old Town, which the hamlet commissioned separately. The symbolism concerns the hamlet's interest in dairy pasturage. The indicates a curious local feature, Whitechapel Mount.
"Sailor Town".
Running due east from the Tower of London was the Ratcliff Highway, a coastal route originating in Roman times. Cutting across a peninsula to avoid the marshlands of Wapping, it rejoined the Thames at the gravel outcrop of Ratcliff. By Gascoyne's day the marsh had been reclaimed as gardens and his map shows Ratcliff with three shipyards. The route continued east under other names, going through Limehouse, cutting across the neck of the Isle of Dogs at Poplar, and ending at Blackwall Yard where East Indiamen were built. Ribbon development along much of this route produced a densely settled maritime population.
Re-publication.
In 1995 the London Topographical Society published a facsimile of Gascoyne's four maps in eight large sheets in a looseleaf folder, together with learned commentaries by William Ravenhill and David Johnson; the folder of maps and the commentaries are now sold separately. A reduced version of the main map had been published by John Strype in 1755, and again by Stepney Parish in 1890.
The cartouches of Joel Gascoyne.
After 300 years Gascoyne's surviving charts and maps are not necessarily in perfect condition, and high-resolution images are not always available. Even so, his characteristic style of cartouche-making can be examined.
A cartouche was usually placed above or around the scale, and was a limited area wherein the cartographer was not only free, but expected to display his talent for decoration. Gascoyne's work was characterised by bold and imaginative cartouches which became a kind of trademark. Map historian William Ravenhill called him a cartographer with style.
Death.
When Gascoyne negotiated with the Vestry of St Dunstan Stepney in 1702, he could see a prominent inscribed stone in the church, the image of which is reproduced here. In less than three years, Joel Gascoyne was dead.
Except professionally, almost nothing is known about his personal life, except that he was married to one Elizabeth and that she, living in Barking, applied for letters of administration of his estate on 13 February 1705.