• That map image is not a perfect reflection of Victorian London's geography (check out the discrepancy between the famous S-curve around Greenwich, and the Stolen River equivalent - this caused us some headaches when we revisited the geography for Sunless Sea). This is partly artistic licence and partly deliberate (the Fall and the Bazaar distorted London). So don't take it too literally.

• Hood's Bridge is, in fact, Waterloo Bridge... the content that puts the river at the end of Moloch Street was written by someone who hadn't lived in London and was possibly looking at the wrong bit of the map. My bad for letting it through review, and I've done penance by fixing the text.

• The Shuttered Palace is actually not Buckingham Palace, and its westward placement on the map isn't a mistake. There's a counterfactual explanation for the Empress residing there, but we've never more than glanced at it. You folks can probably work it out from first principles though.

• Wolfstack Docks., pile of dogs. I didn't sink quite that low! It is a reference to the Isle of Dogs, of course, but the 'stack' bit was vaguely meant to evoke 'smoke-stack'. The pile is an unfortunate coincidence.

• The Square of Lofty Words dates from an early spitballing session from before the game was actually set in London - so it never found a real-world twin.

• Benthic/Summerset are emphatically UCL/King's, but Yasmeen, who wrote much of the University content, seasoned it with her Cambridge experience, so those of you who detected that flavour didn't entirely imagine it.

• Eventually someone will point out that 'Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' was written in 1886, far too late to have given its name to Hyde Park.... again my bad for letting this one slip through review. We will no doubt retcon an explanation at some point, but I hereby put my hand up to it to pre-empt confusion.

• The Bazaar is actually located by Borough Market - arguably the oldest market in London, though there are competing claims, so I'm afraid it was a stab at historical resonance rather than subversion. In the great tradition of fictionally convenient geography, its spires end up being visible from implausible windows, so there are very possibly inconsistencies in various bits of text that suggest it's in all sort of places.

1. I suspect the Bishop of Southwark is inspired not by any historical counterpart, but by a famous incident involving the previous occupant of the post and an unfortunate combination of alcohol, children's toys, someone else's car and the words 'I'm the Bishop of Southwark! It's what I do!'


2. The University is definitely the University of London. The rivalry between University College and King's College is historically well documented; UC was explicitly created as a secular alternative to Oxbridge; it offered nonsensical, flim-flammy subjects like English Literature; it was inspired by the radical ideas of Jeremy Bentham; and by 1891, it even admitted women. Furthermore, these institutions are not entirely without quadrangles.
   
   There are certainly many Oxbridge tropes in play, but I think they're there as light-hearted crowd pleasers. Leaving aside the small matter that Oxford and Cambridge are very much not in London, neither had or has a reputation for being radical, nor is there a disparity in wealth. Finally, Summerset and Benthic are in no way described as if each were a federation of separate colleges; they're always portrayed as individual colleges, like Trinity or Magdalene or... University College.

Anyone found an equivalent for Takepenny Street? It seems to be in Spite, with a nameless church and a nameless brothel. Maybe they're one and the same, and that's where Scarlet Saints are made. :P

Its possible to explore Victorian London in quite some detail here http://goo.gl/9pQAfP which may help prospective mappers

• Marble Arch it is! Good to know.
• I daresay a lot of train stations were destroyed, or flooded, or repurposed, or filled with venomous slugs, during the Fall. Perhaps Baker St was the largest surviving station that was pointing in the right direction to be connected to Hell.
• I was looking at the umbrella sale text and the Markov case a few days ago, but forgot about it when I was writing this up! The west side of the city seems to have been the most disarranged by the Fall, so perhaps it's a new bridge, or an existing one that got moved. Edit: Wiki says that Thomas Hood wrote a poem about Waterloo Bridge. Could be the link!
  
• I only got the Jekyll & Hide gag as I was writing this all up.
• The University is certainly steeped in Oxbridge, but King's College being aristocratic and CoE while University College was radial, secular and upper-middle class certainly fits. Though in real life, King's has a Principal and UC a Provost. Also, the mottos fit - "Superbe et sophistice" for "Sancte et Sapienter" and "Omnes adsint, quamvis dementi, quamvis nefasti" for "Cuncti adsint meritaeque expectent praemia palmae".
• St Bartholomew's sounds solid!
• Covent - Convent - Nuns - Veil?
• Wikipedia says that, in fact, Gropecunt Lane was just next to Puppekirty Lane, which it translates as "poke-skirt". Combine the two and we have something not dissimilar to Grabskirt! That would put it in the region of Spite, but the game text says it's Veilgarden, so I'm just assuming that it's near the border.
• Every period source I find prior to the 1890s refers to the "Zoological Gardens" - and even the 90s sources put the abbreviation safely within quotation marks, accompanied by exclamation marks to indicate that this is an informal bit of writing, so they're allowed to use some young person's slang, really!
• At first I thought Doubt Street was too far from the right place, but the more I look at it, the more certain it feels. I also notice that it's quite close to the church of St Dunstan-in-the-West, which many storytellers claim was where Sweeney Todd hid some of the bodies. So, I guess we've found the location of St Dunstan's!
• The Bone bell apparently marks the opening of the night-market of Spite. So, certainly Cockney territory
• Wilton's Music Hall was built on a public house known as the Mahogany Bar. Boom, you've solved it!
• I made the Isle of Dogs connection years ago but never got the isle/pile gag. Bwaa waa waaaa.
• Royal Opera House fits. I wonder if the Old Empress is the Imperial Theatre, referred to at least once in the Holmes canon as the famous "old Imperial"?
• I had no idea where the Square of Lofty Words might be - I was familiar with Hyde Park being a centre of protest and public speaking, and was mildly surprised that Charley Square was identified as being in Watchmaker's, but I didn't know Speaker's Corner in particular.
  
• I haven't really touched on the south-west, because it's become tangled with Karakorum, and that's a whole other can of snakes.
  

1886 may be (just) before the game began, Richard, but it way post-dates the Fall of London, which I believe was 30 years previous to the actual starting point of the game. See http://www.failbettergames.com/?page_id=20

Omnes adsint, quamvis dementi, quamvis nefasti

Benthic College is the younger, more modern of the University's colleges. As the motto says, all are welcome here. The demonic, the soulless, the radical, even the poor.

This is a grand thread. Well assembled, folks! I don't want to spoil anyone's fun, and anyway the author is dead and all that.

• Alexis Kennedy wrote:
  

  The Shuttered Palace is actually not Buckingham Palace, and its westward placement on the map isn't a mistake. There's a counterfactual explanation for the Empress residing there, but we've never more than glanced at it. You folks can probably work it out from first principles though.

• Alexis Kennedy wrote:
  

  Eventually someone will point out that 'Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' was written in 1886, far too late to have given its name to Hyde Park.... again my bad for letting this one slip through review. We will no doubt retcon an explanation at some point, but I hereby put my hand up to it to pre-empt confusion.

I protest! Benthic can't possibly be UCL!

Omnes adsint, quamvis dementi, quamvis nefasti

Benthic College is the younger, more modern of the University's colleges. As the motto says, all are welcome here. The demonic, the soulless, the radical, even the poor.

Younger? Younger?! We were founded three whole years before those bastards at Kings!

Also, there's the obvious absence of Tomb Colonist Jeremy Bentham shuffling around campus.

edited by Flidget on 2/27/2014

In 1469, the Bow Bells were rung to mark the 9 o'clock curfew by order of the Common Council. The curfew was rescinded in 1876, hence the practice discontinued.

...and thanks to a certain festival, I've just been to Mutton Island, which probably refers to Lambeth. I'd like to know about Shrub, though; it sounds ridiculous as a name, completely out of place (though, in fairness, so does Mutton).

Geography alert! If you have a Noman and the right Ambition, you get this:

"An annex of the Bazaar extends past the cathedral to the rusting shadows of Beazley's Gate"

Since we know the Bazaar is at Borough Market, the cathedral's just Southwark Cathedral - no mystery there.

Beazley's Gate? No idea. I don't know that part of London at all well, so there might be some obvious analogue. Or, fancifully, perhaps it's an homage to Joseph Bazalgette..

at a public house called the Mitre, an assembly of bandaged gentlemen welcome the baronet into their fraternity

an old tunnel beneath the Fourth Footman (a pub in Watchmaker's Hill/Greenwich)

a cheese shop of ill repute

(in Veilgarden/Covent Garden) the Valkyrie standing high on the (roof of the Coloratura opera house). She stares at the glass ceiling of the opposing market

Located just across the river from the Forgotten Quarter, the Eclipse Tavern is a place for shy devils, treasure-hunters, and those who remember false histories.

Hyde Park is about two miles long and Kensington Palace is on the opposite side from Hyde Park Corner. You physically cannot see the Palace from Hyde Park corner, both because of the distance but also because the park is not a field. There are trees etc in the way (also: "the general lack of trees these days" are you referring to 2017? There are plenty of trees.). And that's assuming you are at Hyde Park Corner - any further along actual Piccadilly and you also have manor houses in the way of the line of sight.

Anyway, all I was saying was that specific snippet cannot be taken literally. Lusitania Row *is* Piccadilly as far as I am concerned, just not due to the alleged proximity to the Shuttered Palace.

Because even in 1860, the British Museum was a going concern that would have been a lot less pathetic than the sad little display that the Museum of Mistakes is supposed to be.

MrCandles wrote:

Where is Flute Street?

Flute Street likely doesn't correspond to any real-life London location (it's beneath the Neath, after all), and it's likely been here for a few cities now.

Which makes you wonder, did the other cities have Rubberies?

Richard wrote:

Geography alert! If you have a Noman and the right Ambition, you get this:

"An annex of the Bazaar extends past the cathedral to the rusting shadows of Beazley's Gate"

Since we know the Bazaar is at Borough Market, the cathedral's just Southwark Cathedral - no mystery there.

Beazley's Gate? No idea. I don't know that part of London at all well, so there might be some obvious analogue. Or, fancifully, perhaps it's an homage to Joseph Bazalgette..

I wonder if it's a subtle nod to Michael Moorcock. He has a Bishop Beesley in the 'Jerry Cornelius' stories, which could make it Bishopsgate...