‘Tourists’

Detail from Pieter van der Aa’s Prospect of London
© Altea Gallery (whole image).

Pieter van der Aa (1659-1733), Leiden publisher, specialised in maps and atlases. This one (c. 1720) is from a series of ‘prospects’ of European cities viewed from (sometimes nonexistent) hills. The travellers are looking down on London from a height beyond Southwark, probably having St Paul’s pointed out to them across the Thames. The buildings and gardens immediately in front of them belong to Winchester House, residence of the Bishop of Winchester, who owned most of Southwark, including the notorious South Bank brothels. The girls in them were known as ‘Winchester geese’.

See the Altea Gallery website for the whole image (enlargeable). It is of London before the Great Fire, which suggests that it could be indebted to Wenceslas Hollar’s sketches. The Globe Theatre, and its companion the Bear, can been seen in the open land behind Winchester House. Southwark Cathedral, however, seems strangely to have lost its tower: probably because the original sketches were taken from it.