The River Thames: a different view
Explore Layla Curtis's artwork which is based around a map of the river
The Bodleian is fortunate to have acquired a recent artwork by Layla Curtis, The Thames (from London Bridge, Arizona to Sheerness, Canada).
Layla Curtis is a British artist whose practice has often focused on place and landscape and this is one of several works she has made that involves mapping. She explores our connections with place, and connections between places. In her cartographic work, she creates a collage of a fictional combination of cities, towns and roads within a familiar form, questioning the simple presumptions about what comes next and who belongs where.
The Thames was created in 2013 and acquired by the Bodleian Map Room in 2020. At first glance it is a map of the River Thames as it flows from London east to the sea. In fact it is a collaged map, hand constructed from pieces of maps and charts from all over the world, following the approximate line of the Thames and showing areas that relate to it or connect to local place names from across the world.
The more you look at this artwork, the more questions it gives rise to. A few of the connections between Curtis's map, and the real world locations it references, are given here, for just four of the ten sheets.
The map is on 10 sheets. This first section is titled The Thames (Section 1: From London Bridge, Arizona to Salt Island, British Virgin Islands).
It shows East London and a new take on the Isle of Dogs. The shape of the Isle of Dogs in London (actually a promontory within a loop of the river) is familiar to anyone who knows the map of London or who watches the BBC soap opera Eastenders. Here the Isle of Dogs is replaced with Dog Islands as portrayed on a sea chart of the British Virgin Islands. The name reportedly results from sailors hearing the barking of seals and mistaking them for dogs.
The name appears in the middle of this chart of The Caribbee Islands, the Virgin Islands and the Isle of Porto Rico, from Thomas Jefferys’s West-India Atlas, published in 1775 (scroll right to see the earlier chart). There is also a Beef Island - which also makes an appearance on Curtis's map!
London Bridge
Zooming in, we can see that London Bridge has been replaced by London Bridge, Arizona. This is of course the bridge that originally spanned the River Thames in London; in 1968 it was purchased and relocated to Lake Havasu City in Arizona. Curtis’s Thames map returns it to its original home.
The photograph shows the original London Bridge in its new location.
Image of London Bridge, Arizona. Attribution: HavAZ2018, CC BY-SA 4.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Royal Docks
This is the area of the Royal Docks. On Curtis's map, the area is also shown as mostly water, and some royal and maritime names are referenced: Victoria Harbour, Prince Albert Sound. The Cyril E. King airport is transplanted from the US Virgin Islands, in roughly the location of London City Airport. The names of the islands reflect some of the products - beef, gunpowder and tobacco - that would have passed through the docks.
The photographic view of the Royal Docks (Royal Victoria, Royal Albert and King George V Docks) from the 1950s shows the largest group, which at its height provided 10 miles of deep water quays.
Immediately to the west, a lake formed in the crater caused by a huge meteorite occupies the position of the Millenium Dome.
The Thames (Section 2: From Sugar Island, Maine to Cut ’n Shoot, Texas)
This section of the map continues east along the Thames towards the sea. Top centre is Dagenham, famous for the Ford Motor Works which have produced millions of vehicles. This is referenced in Curtis's map by two places called Ford City and numerous other place names including Ford. One of these, Ford City in California, was actually named after the Ford Model T car. Others are named for founders called Ford.
The second image shows the area in a road atlas, Ford road maps, published by the company in 1936 just 5 years after the plant opened. It certainly implies that Ford was a defining aspect of Dagenham. The factory still makes engines but cars are no longer assembled there.
Great Dismal Swamp
What would the people of Thamesmead and Erith think to see their home renamed as the Great Dismal Swamp? To be fair, part of the area is a sewage works.
On the other hand, places with a fine view of the river have been identified as Riverside and River View, and there are two Belvederes (one with a slight variation in spelling) and Bellevue; this references the local Belvedere in Bexley, as well as suggesting that this is an area with good views over the river.
Cut and Shoot
Who could fail to be intrigued by a settlement named Cut and Shoot? The precise origins of the quarrel that sparked this town name in Texas are forgotten. It has found its way to the banks of Curtis's Thames in roughly the location occupied by Dartford Clay Shooting Club.
The Thames (Section 8: From Drakes Bay, California to Tristan da Cunha)
Towards the sea, section 8 covers the northern part of the Thames estuary.
The south Essex coast features here with a collection of places called Essex referencing the name of the English county, most of them from nowhere near the original Essex. The Essex Shipbuilding Museum, for example, is in New England.
Sir Francis Drake Channel and the Northwest Passage
Francis Drake, the famous Elizabethan navigator and pirate, began his sailing career based on the Medway River just to the south. Sir Francis Drake Channel appears here, and the town of Chatham (actually further up the Medway) is referenced with a map of Chatham Islands Territory. Shown in the middle of the Thames Estuary, they have been moved a long way from their original home south of New Zealand.
There is a further possible connection with Drake. On the north coast is the town of Great Wakering. Drake allegedly said before his death that his drum should be returned to England, and if anyone beat on it in England's hour of need, he would awaken and return to defend the country, rather like King Arthur.
The northwest passage passes by, transplanted from its usual location passing around northern Canada, famous scene of the ill-fated Franklin expedition (see second image).
The Thames (Section 9: From Medway, Maine to New London Bay, Canada)
The final section illustrated here shows the south side of the Thames Estuary
Montgomery Island
Curtis's map includes a new island in the Thames Estuary: Montgomery Island. A composite of places named or beginning with Montgomery, it is surrounded by warning signs and has a bay called Wreck Cove. The area is in reality the Richard Montgomery Exclusion Zone: the site of a wreck, the SS Richard Montgomery, which sank in shallow water in 1944 carrying a cargo of munitions, most of which was not recovered. The masts of the ship can be seen above the water, as shown in the image here. An explosion is thought to be unlikely.
Picture credit: Richard Montgomery. By Clem Rutter, Rochester, Kent, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Kent
This south side of the River Thames is in Kent, and a cluster of names here, from Kent Peninsula to a number of Fort Kents, acknowledge the fact.
The map also explores a tenuous connection with another famous Montgomery, perhaps referencing the shipwreck shown above. The writer L.M. Montgomery wrote the famous Anne of Green Gables series, and the map also shows her birthplace and sites associated with her work.
These are just four of the ten sections of The Thames, and there is more to see on each one. If you would like to read more about this work, there is more information below.
This article explores the whole of the map and has images of all ten sections:
This article from GeoHumanities is available from Taylor and Francis online https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2373566X.2019.1631203 (sign in required)
Claire Reddleman (2019) Disrupting the Cartographic View from Nowhere: “Hating Empire Properly” in Layla Curtis’s Cartographic Collage The Thames, GeoHumanities, 5:2, 514-532, DOI: 10.1080/2373566X.2019.1631203 .
If you would like to experience another of Layla Curtis's works, Newcastle-Gateshead, it features in Treasures from the Map Room, a recent Bodleian Libraries publication, along with many other maps from our collection:
.