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Amazing Flying Object

17th Feb, 2010 to 17th Mar, 2010

This interesting engraved print came to light when an album, containing about 600 Surrey 18th/19th century topographical prints, was being catalogued.


At first glance it looks like a simple picture of Stockwell Common in the late 18th century. At the time Stockwell Common was part of Surrey. Look more closely at the top left hand corner and you’ll see a hot air balloon. This may be what the two figures are looking at. Although not an unusual sight for us now, in 1786 it would have been the source of amazement. This is only three years after the first manned hot air balloon flight.

Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes made their first untethered flight in a Montgolfier hot air balloon on 21 November 1783, in the Bois de Boulogne, France.

In 1785 the French balloonist, Jean Pierre Blanchard, and his American co pilot, John Jefferies, flew across the English Channel. The English Channel was the first test for long distance ballooning and a just year later a balloon was pictured flying over Stockwell Common. The Gentleman's Magazine for February 1785 (page 144) contains a "Particular Account of a Voyage in the Atmosphere, from Dover Castle to France, in a Grand Balloon". This flight took place on January 7th 1785. The Magazine also contains a sketch of the balloon, with Dover Castle in the background. The boat-like gondola (basket) bears a stricking similarity to the one in the engraving of a balloon over Stockwell Common.

The phrase at the bottom of the image, “Publish’d as the Act directs”, confirms it was published on December 21st 1786, although we don’t know whether it appeared in a journal or a book or was sold as a single print. The Act had its origins in a statute of Queen Anne dated 1709 – one of the earliest copyright acts.

Robert Sayer (1724 or 1725-1794) was one of the leading map publishers and printsellers working in England in the second half of the eighteenth century. His prolific output included maps and atlases of America, portraits and nautical engravings.

This engraved print is from a collection of papers from the 16th to the 19th century put together by Frederick Arthur Heygate Lambert of Banstead, Antiquarian (1857-1929) (SHC ref 2331).

Col F A H Lambert is perhaps best known as the editor of the Banstead Parish Registers (1896) and as author of Surrey in the Little Guides series (1902).  He was educated at Eton, was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Justice of the Peace of Surrey and a Colonel of the Middlesex Imperial Yeomanry.

A montage of images, engraved from original studies by William Henry Prior (1812-1882) and produced for the part-work "Old and New London" (1873-1878), includes an almost identical view of the building. The caption on the engraving gives the name as The Old Inn on the Common.