 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail Bookshop |
| Founded | 1853 |
| Founder | Edward Stanford |
| Website | www.stanfords.co.uk |
Stanfords is a specialist bookshop of maps and travel books in London, established in 1853 by Edward Stanford. [1] Its collection of maps, globes, and maritime charts [2] is considered the world's largest. [3] It has also supplied cartography for the British Army and for James Bond films.[ citation needed ]
At the time of the shop's opening, it was the only mapmaker in London, with John Bolton as an in-house cartographer. [4] Stanfords opened at the height of global exploration and colonialism, hence, cartographic works were in great demand. The shop quickly expanded to 7 and 8 Charing Cross whilst acquiring premises on Trinity Place for printing works. [5] The store on Long Acre in Covent Garden, central London, was the location of the company's printing business [4] before the entire operation moved there in January 1901. [5]
Stanfords was hit by an incendiary bomb on the night of 15 April 1941 and it only survived due to the thousands of Ordnance Survey maps tightly stacked on the shop's upper floors, which kept the fire from spreading. [6]
For the shop's 150th anniversary a National Geographic world map was imposed onto the ground floor, as well as a map of the Himalaya and London on the other floors, [5] costing £40,000. [7] In 1997 a second store opened in Bristol. [8] The company also operates a division based in Manchester providing mapping for business purposes such as large scale maps for planning applications. In 2018 Stanfords opened a new location at 7 Mercer Walk in Covent Garden; in January 2019 the Long Acre site closed. [9] [10]
In 2015 the company created the annual Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards to honour, celebrate and champion travel writing as a genre and to bring the travel writing community together.[ citation needed ]
On 31 January 2022 the company acquired the Bookharbour business from OneOcean.
Having a reputation for its extensive collection of maps, Stanfords is claimed[ by whom? ] to be "an essential first port of call for adventure and armchair travellers alike". Customers past and present include David Livingstone, Robert Scott, Ernest Shackleton, Florence Nightingale, Ranulph Fiennes, Bill Bryson and Michael Palin. [5] Stanfords also provided the charts for Amy Johnson's solo flight to Australia. [6]
In Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles , Sherlock Holmes orders from Stanfords (named Stamfords in the story) a large-scale Ordnance Survey map of a suspected crime-scene on Dartmoor. [11]
Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and with the Royal Opera House, itself known as "Covent Garden". The district is divided by the main thoroughfare of Long Acre, north of which is given over to independent shops centred on Neal's Yard and Seven Dials, while the south contains the central square with its street performers and most of the historical buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the London Transport Museum and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
Cecil Court is a pedestrian street with Victorian shop-frontages in Westminster, England, linking Charing Cross Road and St Martin's Lane. Since the 1930s, it has been known as the new Booksellers' Row.
Borough Market is a wholesale and retail market hall in Southwark, London, England. It is one of the largest and oldest food markets in London, with a market on the site dating back to at least the 12th century. The present buildings were built in the 1850s, and today the market mainly sells speciality foods to the general public.
Hatchards is an English bookshop claiming to be the oldest in the United Kingdom, founded on Piccadilly in 1797 by John Hatchard. After one move, it has been at the same location on Piccadilly next to Fortnum & Mason since 1801, and the two stores are also neighbours in St. Pancras railway station as of 2014. It has a reputation for attracting high-profile authors and holds three royal warrants granted by King Charles III, Queen Elizabeth II, and Prince Philip respectively.
St Martin's Lane is a street in the City of Westminster, which runs from the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, after which it is named, near Trafalgar Square northwards to Long Acre. At its northern end, it becomes Monmouth Street. St Martin's Lane and Monmouth Street together form the B404.
Cameron Toll is a suburb located to the south of Edinburgh, Scotland. Originally it was the site of a toll house built in the early 19th century, which was located on a stretch of road between Edinburgh and Dalkeith. Today the area is home to Cameron Toll Shopping Centre, which opened in 1984. The meaning of the name Cameron is suggested to be 'crooked hill', derived from the Scots Gaelic 'cam', crooked, and Old Irish 'brun' meaning hill, believed to refer to Arthur's Seat clearly visible nearby; the original name may have been Pictish. There are a few small housing estates to the east of the area.
The Exeter Exchange was a building on the north side of the Strand in London, with an arcade extending partway across the carriageway. It is most famous for the menagerie that occupied its upper floors for over fifty years, from 1773 until the building was demolished in 1829.
Brekstad is a town in the municipality of Ørland in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is located along the Trondheimsfjord at the entrance to the Stjørnfjorden. The town is located about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) south of the village of Uthaug and about 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) west of the villages of Austrått and Ottersbo.
Edward Stanford was the founder of Stanfords, now a pair of map and book shops based in London and Bristol, UK.
The Rock Garden was a music venue located at 6/9 The Piazza, Covent Garden in London.
Bertram Fletcher Robinson was an English sportsman, journalist, editor, author and Liberal Unionist Party activist. During his life-time, he wrote at least three hundred items, including a series of short stories that feature a detective called 'Addington Peace'. Following his untimely death at the age of just 36 years, speculation grew that Robinson was the victim of a curse bestowed upon him by an Egyptian antiquity at the British Museum, which he had researched whilst working as a journalist for a British newspaper. However, Robinson is perhaps best remembered for his literary collaborations with his friends and fellow Crimes Club members, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse and Max Pemberton.
George Philip (1800–1882) was a Scottish cartographer, map publisher and founder of the publishing house George Philip & Son Ltd.
The Sherlock Holmes is a Victorian-themed public house in Northumberland Street near Charing Cross railway station and Trafalgar Square which contains a large collection of memorabilia related to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The original collection was put together for display in Baker Street in London during the Festival of Britain in 1951.
Tavistock Street is a street in the Covent Garden area of London which runs parallel to the Strand between Drury Lane and Southampton Street just south of the market piazza.
The George IV was a public house and concert and dance venue at 144 Brixton Hill, in Brixton, London. At the junction with Waterworks Road, the venue in 2007 became the Southside Bar and later the Music Bar. Following its closure in 2012, it became a branch of Tesco.
Crowsley Park is a 160-acre (65 ha) country estate in South Oxfordshire, central-southern England, owned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
Trollers Gill is a limestone gill or gorge in North Yorkshire, England, close to the village of Skyreholme and 4.7 miles (7.5 km) south-east of Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales. The gorge, which is 0.5 miles (0.8 km) in length, is also known as Trollerdale.
Treadwell's Bookshop is a shop in Store Street, London, in the Bloomsbury area, which sells esoteric books as well as occult supplies. It originally opened in Covent Garden in 2003 and is one of the small number of esoteric bookshops in London along with the Atlantis Bookshop and Watkins Books. Treadwell's audience includes the trending number of younger urban women interested in witchcraft.
Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery is a play by American playwright Ken Ludwig. It premiered at the Arena Stage in Southwest, Washington, D.C. in January 2015 and was directed by Amanda Dehnert.
Monmouth Coffee Company is a coffee roaster, retailer and wholesaler in London, which was founded in 1978. It played an important role in regenerating Neal's Yard and Borough Market. It has remained focused on roasting and selling coffee beans and was one of the foundations for the third wave of coffee in London after the year 2000.
After you left I sent down to Stamford's for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I could find my way about.
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