HOOKE, Robert (1635-1703). Autograph manuscript signed (‘Rob: Hooke’), a surveyor’s report, n.p. [London], 4 July 1670.

HOOKE, Robert (1635-1703). Autograph manuscript signed (‘Rob: Hooke’), a surveyor’s report, n.p. [London], 4 July 1670.

One page, 290 x 180mm, autograph annotations and cancellations.

Rebuilding after the Great Fire: Robert Hooke the Surveyor to the City of London. One of only two autograph manuscripts by the natural philosopher and polymath to appear at international auction in the last forty years. ‘We whose names are underwritten, two of the Surveyors of the City of London, by the Directions of the Right hon[ourab]ble the Lord Mayor. and In pursuance of the Additional Act of Par[liamen]t: for Rebuilding the City have viewed the houses of Mr. Will: Sanders Draper & Mr. John Rowly Skinner situate[d] on Ludgate Hill, and being informed by both the said partys that before the Late dreadfull fire the said Rowly had from the 2d story upward the Room of seaventeen foot from North to South and ten foot in bredth from East to West over the passage and part of the shop of the said Sanders. We therefore find that the said Mr. Sanders hath in Rebuilding his said house carryd the Party wall upright and Intire and inclosed the said Rome of Mr. Rowly to his own house. Now to the ends the said Party wall may remain Intire and upright we doe order and award that the said Mr. Saunders [sic] shall Injoy all these Roome of 10 foot in bredth & 17 foot in Length wholy to himself and that the said Rowly shall make such Legall conveyances of the same unto him as cou[n]cill Learned in the Law shall advise if it be necessary, and that the said Mr. Sanders shall make the like conveyance to him, the said Rowell [sic], a parcill of Groun[d] lying next behind the house of the said Rowly which said parcell shall contein fourteen foot in bredth from East to West and twelve foot in depth from North to South’.

By the time the last flames of the Great Fire of London had been damped, the blaze had consumed over 13,000 houses and public buildings including St Paul’s Cathedral: shortly after the fire, moving to pre-emptively quell public unrest, Charles II proclaimed the imminent rebuilding of a much more beautiful city, a modern, convenient European centre for trade. Hooke was one of those who answered the royal call for plans for a new London, along with John Evelyn and Christopher Wren; he presented to the Royal Society a model for reconstructing the destroyed portion of the city on a grid system. His grid-plan was not adopted – such an idea was ultimately deemed unworkable, due to the complex network of property titles across the city, and it was decided that rebuilding would take place along the existing roads – but Hooke was nevertheless appointed one of three official surveyors to the City of London for the reconstruction, a project that was to last decades. In his role as surveyor, in which capacity he worked under his distant cousin and close friend Christopher Wren, Hooke was guided by the Rebuilding Acts of 1667 and 1670; he was often called upon to investigate and arbitrate in the matter of complaints that arose, almost as an inevitability, once the citizens of London began their own private rebuilding projects. The present document relates to such a matter; Hooke and his fellow Surveyor to the City, John Oliver, pronounce their view on a property-rights infringement.

[With:] HOLLAR, Wenceslaus (1607-1677). A map or groundplot of the citty of London and the suburbes thereof that is to say all which is within the iurisdiction of the Lord Mayor. London: John Overton, at the White Horse in Little Brittaine, 1666.

Very rare first edition, first issue of Hollar’s post-Great Fire map of London. Glanville 11 (‘the details have a strong claim to accuracy’); Howgego 19(1). Engraved map, verso blank, covering the area from Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the west to the Tower in the east, and from Southwark and the River Thames north to ‘Clerkenwell Greene’ and ‘Fynsbury Fields,’ inset numbered key to churches and other places to lower-right corner together with scale, small inset map A Generall Map of the whole Citty of London with Westminster & all the Suburbs, by which may bee computed the proportion of that which is burnt, with other parts standing to lower-left corner, compass rose and ships in River Thames, 276 x 353mm (plate mark), 305 x 370mm (sheet).