Mapping The Tube: The Evolution Of A Design Icon

I recently had a fascinating visit to the Map House in Knightsbridge. 

The Map House was established on another site, St James’s Street in St James’s, in 1907, before moving to its current site in 1973.

They originally made their own maps and over the years they have supplied maps of Antarctica to Ernest Shackleton, the Far East to Winston Churchill and the Western Front to Edward VIII. 

After the move to 54 Beauchamp Place in Knightsbridge, the company stopped producing their own maps and became a specifically antiquarian map specialist. Today they are the largest and oldest antique map shop in London, with over 10,000 maps from all over the world in stock. 

The Exhibition

From the 25th October until the 20th November they have an exhibition called Mapping The Tube 1863-2023. 

The tube map, designed by Harry Beck in the 1930s, is undeniably an iconic symbol of London. The exhibition traces the development of the map through the centuries.

The First Maps

In January 1863 London’s first tube line opened: the Metropolitan Railway, running from Paddington to Farringdon. 

With many more lines from different companies on the way, cartographers sensed an opportunity and started producing maps of the proposed railway lines. These were not for public consumption, but to go before the House of Lords Select Committee to help them approve and plan the city’s growing transport network. 

On display, on the upper floor, is James Wyldes’ New Map of London from 1863. It shows all the proposed railways. 

Around the outside is a yellow boundary, inside which no new main railway stations were allowed. Therefore, it was decided, underground lines were needed to link them. This really shows the first gasp of trying to organise London’s underground train system. 

Below is one of the earliest maps issued to the public, The Improved District Railway Map (1880). 

Getting People Onto The Tube 

In the early 20th century, the London Underground had a bit of an issue, in it was largely unpopular and losing money. It was overcrowded, unclean and tardy. Frank Pick, the publicity manager for the London Underground, therefore commissioned artists to produce posters and other maps to encourage people onto the trains. 

This, for example, is the whimsical Wonderground Map by Macdonald Gill from 1914, showing all the amazing places you can get to on the tube.

Attempting To Map The Tube 

In the early 20th century many of the tube lines, which had been started by different companies, were linked up and run under one organisation, the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL). 

The below map was produced in 1909 to help people navigate the tube.

As you can see, it has attempted to be geographically accurate, so it ends up looking like a colourful plate of spaghetti. Some of the names are written at strange angles to squeeze them in and it was not easy to use. 

In the 1920s Fred Stingemore designed an improved version.

He used a bit of artistic license with the geography and smoothed the lines. However, there is a lot of wasted space when you have to introduce the more distant stations. 

Enter, Harry Beck. 

Harry Beck

In the late 1920s, Harry Beck, one of the UERL’s engineering draughtsmen, lost his job due to funding cuts. 

Instead of wallowing in resentment for being laid off, Beck worked on creating a new design for the tube map. He based it on an electrical circuit diagram and set about “straightening the lines, experimenting with diagonals and evening out the distance between stations”.

Beck was paid just £5 and 5 shillings for his work (roughly £300 in today’s money). He continued to work freelance though and made various updates to the map. 

The Map House has an extremely rare First Edition tube map poster from 1933.

2000 were originally produced to be displayed in stations, but only around 5 are left, that we know of. The Map House acquired it when the London Transport Museum put on a special auction of duplicate material to raise money. 

Below is an unpublished proof of the map from 1932, with Beck’s annotations on it. 

There are also lots of other sketches by Beck in the exhibition. This is an unfinished sketch showing a proposed new layout for the District Line branch to Richmond. 

These are Beck’s sketches trying to decide how best to map the area around King’s Cross. 

Other Items

They also have a couple of other tube maps from around the world, such as this one of Sydney from 1939, clearly showing the impact of Beck. 

They have a wall of customer tube maps from the 1930s until the present day. 

Spot the couple they have from during World War Two when colour printing became too expensive. 

They even have this one created by Maxwell Roberts in 2024 (the first version was created in 2013), rethinking the tube map, basing the map around concentric circles.

The circle line in the centre has also cleverly created the shape of the London Underground Roundel. 

Finally, make sure to check out the amazing beautiful poster in the window. This is called The Londoner’s Transport Throughout the Ages from 1928. 

The exhibition is absolutely well worth dropping by for. All the items are also for sale, find out more about visiting here.

Thank you for reading, more of London’s history below.