Taylor and Skinner's Survey of The Roads of Scotland On An Improved Plan

1792

Priced at 12 shillings, George Taylor and Andrew Skinner's 1776-published "Survey and Maps of The Roads of NorthBritain, or Scotland" was essentially Scotland's first 'road atlas'. It consisted of 61 plates showing roads across Scotlandat the one-inch to the mile scale, covering some 3,000 miles in total, with each page divided into three vertical strips ofa particular road, the volume designed to be folded into a portable accessory for the growing number of travellers andvisitors in Scotland, Taylor and Skinner's original and then uncoloured plates listed in an Appendix to these pages.Taylor (Captain George Taylor of The Duke of Cumberland's late Regiment of Foot) had produced a number ofmanuscript surveys on his own account before beginning his work with Skinner and listed in Volumes 1 and 2 of I. H.

Adams "Descriptive List of Plans in The Scottish Record Office" are his 1772 plan of the course of the River Dovern,an 1772 - 1773 general plan of the lands of Speyside, described as "A very fine and detailed plan . . . with a note givingrecommendations for improvements", a map of Badenoch and a 1773 plan of Aberdeen which Taylor and Skinnerpublished together, when they joined forces as surveyors in Aberdeen in 1776.Together, George Taylor and Andrew Skinner published a number map and road books including their "Survey andMaps of The Roads of North Britain, or Scotland", it in both folio and pocket book editions and their "Survey of TheGreat Post Roads between London, Bath and Bristol" in 1776 but, in 1778, although they had been assistedfinancially by The Commissioners for The Forfeited Estates and by subscriptions, some no doubt from the landedgentry whose names and properlies were shown along many of the roads, they reported that nearly half the 3,000published copies of their Scottish 'road atlas' wereunsold and their 1-inch to 1-mile survey of the counties of Perth andClackmannan 'to be published by subscription of two guineas, to be begun as soon as 300 copies are subscribed for'was never published.With debts still to repay, Taylor and Skinner set off for Ireland, their "Map of The Roads of Ireland" published thatyear of 1778, a second edition following five years later, in 1783, after they had headed west for America where, in1781, they produced a manuscript map of New York, it to be seen today in the archives of The British Museum.George Taylor's own 'Manuscript Roadbook : Sketches of The Roads in Scotland', dating from 1785 and, within a finebinding attributed to Scott of Edinburgh, intended as a present, never published, it reputedly 'one of the mostexquisite and elaborate specimens of drawing and penmanship ever seen', was purchased by The University Library ofCambridge, after a most fortunate sequence of events, in 1967.Today Taylor and Skinner's strip maps are of unique value for showing the detail of Scotland's old routeways, includingthe then new military roads in the Highlands and, covering much of Lowland Scotland, supplement contemporarycounty mapping.

The maps here

, coloured from the originals, were published in Edinburgh, under the title "

Taylor and Skinner'sSurvey of The Roads of Scotland On An Improved Plan

", by Thos. Brown around

1792

Maps of Scotland - ADD + 6 to the map numbers to find the corresponding e.g. 001 + 6 = Page 8 here

001 - Edinburgh to Berwick upon Tweed002 - Edinburgh to Berwick upon Tweed003 - Edinburgh to Berwick upon Tweed AND Edinburgh to Cornhill by Greenlaw004 - Edinburgh to Cornhill by Greenlaw005 - Edinburgh to Cornhill by Greenlaw006 - Edinburgh to Carlisle by Selkirk and Hawick007 - Edinburgh to Carlisle by Hawick008 - Edinburgh to Carlisle