The Hovenden Estate maps (1586-1605)

Commissioned by Robert Hovenden, Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, these cadastral maps detail lands owned by the College: mostly in Buckinghamshire, Middlesex and Kent, with smaller estates in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Shropshire.

The earliest maps were drawn up by Thomas Clerke, assisted by Thomas Langdon, who continued the work after Clerke's death in 1592.

The maps are on large parchment membranes of a similar size (approximately 520mm (h) x 700mm (w)); most have ornate and colourful decorations around the cartouches that contain the description of each map. In these are most usually found the names of the cartographer and in some cases others, and Hovenden as the commissioner; most are dated, and all state that the lands shown belong to All Souls College in Oxford. Scale bars are also often highly decorated. The orientation of the maps varies considerably.

Robert Hovenden was the youngest Warden ever elected, at the age of twenty-seven, and the longest serving, dying in office at the age of seventy after forty-three years. During the years of his wardenship (1571 - 1614), he not only steered the college though various political challenges, but was closely involved in maintaining and improving the buildings, as well as organizing the administrative records of the College, "pre-eminent among Hovenden's characteristic traits are his passion for order and system and his intense practicality"i

The earliest map, that of Whadborough (I:19), was drawn up to show the history of the enclosure of the parish as evidence in a dispute; today it is notable in showing the depopulation of a deserted villageii. It seems likely that the creation of this map for a particular purpose, led to the commissioning first of some of the land held in Romney Marsh, Googy Hall, Scotney. and the Ivychurch area in Kent (1589) (mostly arranged in Volume III), then of Padbury in Buckinghamshire (1591)(I:2), then two more maps of Romney Marsh (1592).

In 1593, after Clerke's death, Langdon embarked on an intense programme of mapping: twenty eight maps in a single year showing land in Northamptonshire (Weedon Weston) (mostly arranged in Volume I); Buckinghamshire (Crendon), Oxfordshire (Wheatley) (mostly arranged in Volume IV), and Shropshire (Alberbury)(mostly arranged in Volume V). In 1595 and 1596 came only twelve maps mostly in Buckinghamshire.

In 1597 came the mapping of Middlesex - Edgware and Kingsbury (mostly arranged in Volume II). Many of the earlier maps are of land which has largely remained rural, and whose features can still be recognized on the maps of over four hundred years ago. The maps of Middlesex show land long ago buried by the sprawl of London, though here the history of the land ownership lives on in many of the street names.

Most of the maps were bound up into three volumes, for which twenty-four shillings were paid in 1608. These were disbound in 1938, and the maps arranged into portfolios. The original bound arrangement of the maps can be discovered in the scraps of paper Indexes pasted into one of the portfolios (Index 1); it is clear that these lists do relate to the three volumes as witnessed by the presence of a pencil shelfmark at the top of each - the format of which reveals that after the new library was built, the three volumes were kept on the bottom shelf of one of the presses on the gallery of the Great Library.

A few maps were separated from the main collection, and have been kept among the College's archives - most of these are notable for their size, and would have been far too large to be accommodated in any volume or portfolio. One map, of Newington in Oxfordshire, remains in a bound manuscript volume (Warden's MS 3). These are listed under their archival references at the end of Volume V.

Perhaps the most notable item in the collection, is not a map at all, but the "bird's-eye" view of the College, most usually referred to as Typus Collegii, and given pride of place at the beginning of the collection (I:1). "It is the most detailed representation of any Tudor college, and recent archaeological exploration has revealed that it was drawn to scale."iii

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