Since the mid-sixteenth century London has received attention from many map-makers and publishers. Before the arrival of the Ordnance Survey, however, only a handful of London maps are both topographically reliable (in terms of contemporary technical ability) and based on original surveys. These are: the lost mid-Tudor copper-engraved map, original of the so-called ‘Agas’ woodcut map, Hollar's uncompleted map of 1661–6, Rocque's maps of London and its environs of the 1740s, and the two post-Fire maps considered here. Of this group only ‘Agas’ and Rocque's maps are familiar and fairly widely used by historians, although, one has to say, more often as book-illustrations for their ornamental and quaint character than for the information they give.