Can the mysteries of Britain’s oldest road map be unravelled?
7 October 2004 A map housed in the Bodleian Library was the star of the BBC Two series Map Man on Thursday 7 October.The Gough Map, also known as the Bodleian Map, is the oldest surviving road map of Great Britain. Drawn in pen, ink and coloured washes on two skins of vellum, the map was donated to the Bodleian Library in Oxford by Richard Gough in 1809. Little is known of its provenance, other than that the map was bought by Gough at a sale in 1774 for half a crown (12 ½ pence). The identity of the map-maker is unknown, the clues to its accurate dating based on historical changes of place name and studies of the hand used to inscribe those names onto the map. In Thursday’s edition of Map Man presenter Nicholas Crane attempted to decipher the symbols of the map and use it to lead him safely through some of Wales’s wildest terrain. The programme asks a number of questions about the map including: “Who was the map-maker and why was it made?” and “Why is there a massive green wilderness d
