John Rocque’s Exact survey of the city and suburbs of Dublin, 1756: an art historical and archaeological analysis

Abstract

John Rocque’s four-sheet Exact survey of the city and suburbs of Dublin, 1756, was the most comprehensive and detailed mapping of any city in these islands before the establishment of the Ordnance Survey in the early-19th century. Rocque was responsible for city maps throughout Europe including ones of Rome, Paris and London. However despite their considerable detail and large scale – the London map comprised 24 sheets and measured 7ft by 13ft – they were all limited to the depiction of the city block. The Dublin map, by contrast, was the only one to provide a detailed plan of every single house plot, out-building, avenue, laneway, courtyard and garden, within the precincts of the mid-18th-century city. In my PhD research in the History of Art Department on the 1756 survey, I am looking to make a systematic study of this map as an art historical artefact of rare significance in European cartography, as well as using it as a primary source for the archaeology of the mid-18th-century city.