Town Plans

15x20 cm

NORWICH
Engraved by T. Starling Islington London. 
Published Jan.y 1. 1826 by P. Youngman, Witham, Essex. 

Copper engraving by Thomas Starling for Excursions in the County of Norfolk...[by Thomas Kitson Cromwell] London, Longman, Hurst, Orme, and Brown et al. 1819.

Thomas Starling, draughtsman, engraver, printer, bookseller and publisher, was born 24 Dec 1796, son of Robert Starling and his wife Elizabeth Kearsley, and baptised at St. Mary Islington on 18th January 1797. Thomas had brothers in similar trades; Parlett Starling, printer, James Kearsley Starling, bookseller, and Matthew James Starling, engraver (mainly topographical views). Thomas was apprenticed (Stationers) in 1811. He married Ellen Smart at Mackworth, Derbyshire, 2nd November 1821. Declared bankrupt in 1824, he featured in a trial at The Old Bailey in 1828 when a canvasser, employed selling his plans of Islington, was prosecuted for embezzling the subscriptions. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society on 23rd December 1833. Briefly imprisoned for debt in 1837, the 1841 Census describes him as an engraver living in Islington with his wife Ellen, schoolmistress, and three children. He died at Rochford, Essex, 15th June 1850. 

This was one of the first published maps by Thomas Starling.
This example has an amended imprint as above dated 1826 and includes the addition of a number of buildings mainly to the south-west, the reference key expanded to 21 places from the original 12 with the scale bar re-engraved from below the key to the border, several ponds added, changes to the castle buildings. The date in the title page to the work was not changed for this later re-issue.

Folds as issued. Good margins. Neat later hand colour. Uncommon.