13.     John Rocque III (Mary Anne Rocque)                                      1764

 


In 1764 Mary Anne, Rocque’s widow, published a reduced copy of the 1744 plan, drawn to the same detail and in the same style. Was the large map too expensive to print, sales too few or did she feel that the map produced by her son-in-law, Andrew Dury, was too insignificant? 

Title:  PLAN of the CITY of EXETER, Reduc’d from the large SURVEY in two Sheets by the late JOHN ROCQUE, Topographer to His Majesty.

Size: 290 x 480 mm with 4 scales: Quarter Mile, Feet, Yards, Perches and 1M = 328mm.

Imprint: Publish’d by Mary Ann Rocque, near Old Round Court in the Strand. 1764 (in the title cartouche) and a signature:  P. Andrews Sculp. 

There is a North point. The title in an elaborate cartouche adjoins a larger cartouche containing the REFERENCE. The four scale bars are below the border. The scale is just half of the earlier Rocque map and the area covered is the same except at the bottom which is cut off at Bull Mead and The Work House (established 1672). The spaces covered by the vignettes in the earlier map are shown as open fields. The Wards are not named otherwise much of the writing remains the same or has been replaced by numbers and the reference. Note the word Exchange written close to the Guildhall but upside down. The garden details vary but still show the Rocque patterns. The Theatre in the key (37) is that in Waterbeer Street, completed in 1734. This theatre had a chequered history and at one point, just before this map was printed, was forced to sell tickets in a most unorthodox fashion; buying Mr Brice's tooth powder, worm powder or corn plaster and showing the packet was your ticket to the theatre.1

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1. See, for example, The Story of the Theatre Royal by Dick Passmore, The Mint Press, 2004, pp. 2-3.

Illustration Reproduced by kind permission of Devon Archives & Local Studies - OM B/EXE/1761/ROC.


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