William Faden was the leading London publisher in his time of large-scale county maps; when the Board of Ordnance began to publish the first Ordnance survey maps, he was he obvious publisher of choice, issuing the first OS map, of Kent, engraved on four-sheets at one inch to one mile, in 1801.
While the map is justly celebrated, the publication may not have been a commercial success, and the second Ordnance Survey map, of Essex, was published by the Ordnance Survey. However, Faden issued single-sheet reduction of both these maps, at half-an-inch to one statute mile, which seem to have had a wider market, partly being more practical in size.
This is the first state of the single-sheet map of Kent; it was reprinted by Faden and his successors on into the 1860s. The engraving was carried out by Benjamin Baker and David Wright; Baker was principal Engraver to the Board of Ordnance at the Tower, his staff regarded as “the best topographical engravers in Europe”.
Very scarce.
Rodger, Large Scale County Maps, 238: noting three institutional locations; Burgess, Printed Maps Of Kent, 94/i: noting two institutional locations.
