The survey of spare beds and stabling of 1686

One of the most important sources of information concerning the road network in the early modern period is the War Office survey of stabling and beds in inns and alehouses of 1686.[i] It gives details of the number of spare beds and stabling ostensibly for all of England and Wales though London and Radnorshire are omitted. It has been used in some regional studies but its sheer size (>11000 lines of data) has meant that hitherto it has never been properly exploited. The generosity of the Leverhulme Trusts made it possible for Jacob Field to digitise the survey. Grant applications are now in place to enable the survey to be linked to GIS. Mapping the numbers of beds in inns and alehouses in Berkshire illustrates the potential of this resource. Mapping those places with above average numbers of beds (21 beds or more) shows the strong correlation between accomodation and towns on the "principal roads" mapped by John Ogilby in his atlas Britannia (1675) especially the roads from London to Bristol via Reading and Newbury and London to Gloucester via Maidenhead and Abingdon. A very similar pattern occurs if the above average number of stable places (48 places or more) are mapped (see Fig. 2).

[i] TNA, WO 30/48

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.