| Administrative History | The history of George Bellas Greenough's 'Geological Map of England and Wales' (1820) has been frequently linked with William Smith's earlier map 'A Delineation of the Strata of England & Wales...' (1815).
In 1808 a delegation of Members of the newly formed Geological Society, which included Greenough, paid a visit to Smith to see his fossil collection and maps. Apparently not convinced by Smith’s stratigraphical theories or impressed with the slow progress of his projected map (which had all but come to a halt), he was not invited to join. The later decision that the Geological Society should instead produce its own official version would prove controversial. Unlike Smith, Greenough did not always go into the field himself to study the geology first hand. Instead he relied on others sending him information which he would then collate. Amongst the sources Greenough was accused of using was Smith's map, leading to accusations of plagiarism.
Greenough defended himself, stating:
“…I have been accused of having acted, if not an unfair, at least an ungenerous part, by trespassing upon ground, which I knew to be, by right of pre-occupancy, his [Smith]. I certainly did know, as early as the year 1804, that such a map was begun; but I appeal to all the friends of Mr Smith, with whom I have conversed upon the subject, and especially to the individual who complains of my conduct, whether he, and they did not, for a long time afterwards, in consequence of a variety of circumstances which it is unnecessary to detail, consider its completion, and still more its publication, hopeless. In the belief that the work had been virtually abandoned by Smith, it was undertaken by me.…Mr Smith’s map was not seen by me till after its publication, and the use I have since made of it has been very limited. The two maps agree in many respects, not because the one has been copied from the other, but because both are correct.…” [from Greenough, G B, ‘Memoir of a Geological Map of England: to Which are Added, an Alphabetical Index to the Hills, and a List of the Hills Arranged According to Counties’ (1820), p4.]
The Geological Society's Map
Much has been written on to what extent Smith’s Map influenced Greenough and exactly when the latter actually saw a version of the work, but both the Society and Greenough were amongst the list of subscribers to the publication and each received a copy of the first imprint. Tellingly, the sheets of Greenough’s copy are marked with notes recording that he did indeed consult it in a very systematic fashion, with comments on each of the plates similar to 'This sheet can be of no further use to the Geol Map, Nov 1818'. |
| CustodialHistory | In the 1860 printed Library Catalogue, which lists the majority of the maps from the bequest of George Bellas Greenough, this map is recorded as being incomplete - consisting of only 14 plates out of 15. A black and white photostat of the missing Plate IV was later inserted to cover this discrepancy. The now 15 sheets at some point become water damaged and were badly conserved in the 1970s/1980s. The sheets have been reconserved but there is still staining and paper loss.
However the missing Plate IV had merely been misfiled and unidentified. It was transferred to the Archives in 2002 where it was described as a 'Map of the Irish Sea'. It was identified by the Archivist in 2011 during a recataloguing exercise, but was not correlated with the other parts until 2014 - as the archive and map collections are catalogued separately. Despite the 14 plates' conservation at the end of 2019, Plate IV is still being housed separately for preservation purposes. The replacement photostat has been retained as a record of the history of the map. |