Kitchin in Harts

 Today's title attempts to include two seemingly mis-spelled words into the blog.  Recently I was fortunate to receive a historic folded map of Hartfordshire drawn by Thomas Kitchin.  I have discovered Mr Kitchin's name occasionally with an e instead of a final i; and the mapmaker insists that our county, though often spelled with an e, should "always" use the letter a.  Which I suppose is correct even today when we pronounce the name as in tart, rather than as bert!

I have to admit I had not heard previously of Thomas Kitchin, and I'm pleased I now have, even more so that he had a connection with St Albans.  Although he appears not to have been born here, he lived in the town (as it then was) during his later life, with a residence in Fishpool Street, and was honoured in death by being buried in St Albans Abbey (Cathedral). Note, in the church, not at the church.

The home of Thomas Kitchin in Fishpool Street, photographed a few years ago before more
recent scaffolding appeared.

In 2024 a blue plaque was fixed to the front of Kitchin's former home, which sent some of us
scurrying for more information about the eighteenth century cartographer!
COURTESY ST ALBANS CIVIC SOCIETY

I had clearly not paid sufficient attention to the Civic Society website either, which records the progress made on the current range of blue plaques.  A recent plaque affixed to a Fishpool Street house marks that belonging to Thomas Kitchin himself.

Thomas Kitchin produced a wealth of maps during the eighteenth century; and his Hartfordshire map seems to have been revised on occasions, the one I now have has a date of 1775 appended to the cover.  The original would have been monochrome, but my version had a hand-painted colour wash add to distinguish the various Hundreds into which the county was divided. 

Naturally, for the purposes of this blog I was keen to inspect the eastern districts of St Albans, which, at the scale produced included rather less marked detail than, for example, the Dury & Andrews map of the same period.  Which, in turn, features fewer detail than William Kip's county map of 1610 – it was probably a derivation of an earlier engraving.

To provide us with a comparison, Kip's map of the county dates from just 35 years after the opening of Shakespeare's Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch.

William Kip created a new engraving c1610 from an earlier cartographer, probably from the
mid seventeenth century.
COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVES & LOCAL STUDIES

A partnership of Andrew Dury & John Andrews resulted in a 1766 county map produced on nine 
sheets.
COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE RECORD SOCIETY

Thomas Kitchin produced a number of county maps, including Hartfordshire.
This version is dated 1775 and is likely to be sourced from previous engravings.
COURTESY OLD MAPS LIBRARY

The Kip and Kitchin maps are of similar scale, although their production is well over a century apart.  Kip dispensed with roads altogether, in favour of streams and rivers, and most importantly key properties where gentlemen of note resided, and specifically any warrens they may have owned.

Kitchin recognised the importance of roads which connected towns and the distances between them.  The road on this sample of his map is the one between St Albans and Hatfield; the circled number being the number of miles between them (6.0).  Other roads which connect with the Hatfield Road are also drawn.

Dury & Andrew have presented all key roads which are part of the local network, the topography and a simplified field layout.

Beaumonts, then a manorial seat on all maps is spelled – and perhaps pronounced – in three different ways: Beamondes, Bemonds, and Beamond.  Oaklands was too recent to appear on any map and was not sufficiently important to be added to the engraving as its original name, Three Houses; it had first been identified under this name in the fourteenth century, maybe even earlier.

Once again Kip is too limited in detail to mark what today we refer to as Marshals Wick. Both Kitchin and Dury use the letter c (Marchals Wick).

As we might expect the larger scale of Dury & Andrews provides the opportunity of marking a number of farms.  We know that Jersey Farm had only changed its name in recent times, but its former label was already in use in 1766; so it will take more investigation yet to discover the source of the name Evan in Evan's Farm.  Nearby, where we might have expected to find Marshalswick Farm – or rather Marchals Wick, we see instead the name Wheelers (or Wheeler's); so these two names extend back at least three centuries.

The present day location of Cunningham Hill had previously been known as Curry Comb Hill.

Finally, our newly-found Kitchin map incorporates information not included on the above extract.  Spaces around the map's edges reveal a range of abbreviations (which it labels Explanations): Vicarages, Rectories, Windmills, Watermills, Post stages, Parks (presumably grounds  attached to the private domains of gentlemen of note), Market Days, and Roads open and healthy. Parliamentary Boroughs have stars attached.  We are usefully reminded, for the benefit of map users of the eighteenth century, that the number of furlongs in each mile is eight.

So, the three historic maps sampled above were very different and provide us with a range of contexts for understanding the landscapes of our county in previous centuries.