George Philip & Son atlases for Shell, BP and National

This page provides a detailed look at the many atlases produced by George Philip & Son Ltd for Shell, BP and National Benzole over the 25 years or so from 1963 to 1989. Around 1960, Shellmex-BP commissioned a new series of sectional maps of the British Isles with clearer cartography and a distinctive house style. Notable features included a plain white background as used on American maps (and Esso's UK maps followed this convention), and trunk roads highlighted by being drawn around twice the width of other classified roads. The maps were initially drawn at a scale of 5 miles to the inch; from 1965 they were redrawn with more detail at 4 miles to the inch and then in 1974 photographically enlarged to a metric scale of 1:200,000.

However many customers still preferred the alternative format of a road atlas and, from 1963, Philip's recycled the maps into hardback or softback atlases carrying one of the three oil company names. Although the sheet maps from the three brands were usually identical, the atlases included some different selection of content as described below. The atlases also retained the non-metric scale of 1:316,800 (5 miles to the inch), with the 4 miles to the inch or metric maps being photographically reduced to the atlas scale.

Unlike most other pages on this website, this page will focus on the map not the covers. However the six atlases shown represent the various brands and an atlas that Philip's produced for C&A, the large clothing retailer, in 1987, presumably to allow it to compete with Marks & Spencer which had begun to sell AA-produced road atlases as a seasonal gift item.

			From L-R: 1965 or 66 softback Shell atlas of Britain; 1976 National/Philip's atlas of Britain; 1982 BP/Philip's atlas of Britain
			1981 softback Shell/Philip's atlas of Britain; 1985 BP-National/Philip's atlas of Britain; 1987 C&A/Philip's atlas of Britain

Main Maps

All map extracts are scaled so as to display at actual size if displayed on a screen at 72dpi; the extracts below are thus approximately 88mm high by 71mm across.

A1 - 1963	A2 - 1968/9	A3 - 1982
		A1 & A2 are similar except for the motorway junction style and use 1:316,800 base mapping. A3 was used for the longest period and is a reduction of mapping originally at 1:253,440; A4 is similar but shows primary and trunk routes in pink, with all dual carriageways in red. A5 is only known from the 1985 BP-National atlas and has yellow trunk and primary A roads, which can easily be confused with B roads.
A4 - 1989	A5 - 1985

London maps

The first row are large scale maps of central London at 5 inches = 1 mile (approx. 1:12,500), although C3 is at 2 inches = 1 mile (1:31,680).

C1 - 1987 (used since 1963)	C2 - 1981	C3 - 1968/9

The Central London maps varied little, with the grey blocks replacing the clearer yellow and white design on some, but not all, 1980s maps. The congested design at a smaller scale (C3) was used for a few years in the 1960s just called "London".

The lower rows of Approaches to London are at ¾ inches = 1 Mile (1:84,480), with the exception of L5 which is at the metric scale of 1:200,000 (and drawn from Philip's sectional mapping).

L1 - 1968/9	L2 - 1982	L3 - 1987
	The Approaches to London maps were also relatively constant; the later ones showed dual carriageways in red like the smaller scale maps. The 1985 BP-National atlas (L4) also used yellow trunk and primary A roads, but was visually unappealing with primary routes less prominent than minor A roads. L5 attempted to place all of Greater London onto a single double page spread.
L4 - 1985		L5 - 1981

Other city maps

Philip's added in selected town plans into National Benzole atlases and occasional other titles in a variety of styles, often drawn from Philip's Navigator series sheet maps at 1:100,000, which had inset town plans. These had also been used on two National Benzole sheet maps published in 1967 & 1968, although Milton Keynes was added in the later atlases. With the exception of B7 below, all the examples are of Bristol (or "Approaches to Bristol"). The dimensions of each map in the National atlases varied, with between one and five on each page.

B1 - 1968/9	B2 - 1982	B3 - 1982
B4 - 1985	B5 - 1985	B7 - 1985
	On the top row the map of Bristol comes from a 1968-9 National atlas; by 1982 minor roads had been removed (top centre) and an environs map at 1:100,000 added. The middle row are all from the 1985 BP-National atlas (which retained the town plans); larger city centres were now in an unattractive red/yellow style, with smaller cities - including Newcastle - in the basic Navigator city style at about 1:18,500. Towns were arranged NW to SE, starting with Glasgow and ending at Brighton. The map of Bristol, left - B6 comes from the softback Shell atlas, and uses a style similar to Approaches to London map except that minor roads are drawn with a single black line, not two; these were laid out in alphabetical order from Birmingham to Swansea, and each occupied a half page .
B6 - 1981

Summary of Atlas contents

The table below is not exhaustive, but includes selected atlases for which the content is known. Print runs are taken from Philip's day books, but these are often a little ambiguous as they list order and billing dates, but not the copyright date (if any) used on the final atlas.

Brand	Year	Board/ Paperback	Total map pages	Main map style	London map pages	London map style	Other map nos.	Other map styles	Print Run
BP	1978	Board	80	A3	8 + 8	C1 + L2	None	n/a	16,000
BP	1980	Paper	80	A3	8 + 8	C1 + L2	None	n/a	6,000
BP	1982	Board	80	A3	8 + 8	C1 + L2	None	n/a	10,000
BP National	1985	Board	112	A5	8 + 8	C1 + L4	80	B4, B5 + B7	5,000?
BP Visco	1989	Paper	68	A4	2	L5	None	n/a	unknown
C&A	1987	Board	80	A4	8 + 8	C1 + L2	None	n/a	unknown
Century Oils (National atlas)	1976	Plain Board	120	A3	8 + 8	C1 + L2	85	B1 + B3 + B8	2,000?
National	1963	Paper	88	A1	8 + 8 + 8	C1 + L3 + L2	None	n/a	8,600
National	1968/9	Board	120	A2	8 + 8 + 8	C1 + L3 + L2	83	B1 + B3 + B8	2,500?
National	1976	Board	120	A3	8 + 8	C1 + L2	85	B1 + B3 + B8	2,000?
National	1982	Board	120	A2	8 + 8	C1 + L2	86	B2 + B3 + B8	2,100
Shell	c1965	Paper	88	A1	8 + 8 + 8	C1 + L3 + L2	None	n/a	20,000
Shell	1971	Board	88	A3	8 + 8 + 8	C1 + L3 + L2	None	n/a	8,000
Shell	1973/4	Board	88	A3	8 + 8 + 8	C1 + L3 + L2	None	n/a	16,000
Shell	1974	Board	88	A3	8 + 8 + 8	C1 + L3 + L2	None	n/a	15,000?
Shell	1975	Board	88	A3	8 + 8 + 8	C1 + L3 + L2	None	n/a	20,000?
Shell	1981	Paper	79	A4	2 + 4	C2 + L2	15	B6	50,000

The later National atlases pad out the urban map pages with features such as a one page motorway planning map of the British Isles, lists of tourist offices, ferries, toll bridges, motorway service areas and local radio stations. All National atlases also have brief gazetteer descriptions of the towns and cities mapped. Included in the total number of town/city plans are six "locator maps" at various scales (right - B8 in the above table), but always smaller and less detailed than the main atlas maps. These appear to have been selected mainly for their ability to fill blank space rather than for any usefulness.
The 1989 BP Visco atlas uniquely includes a planning map of Northern Ireland at 8 miles to the inch, in a quite different style again.

Some atlases are believed to have been produced in 3 versions - softback, board (with oil company advertising) and board in plain leatherette covers. The last of these could then be overprinted in gilt by Philips, usually for use as a promotional gift. So for example as well as the regular National cover, the 1976 National atlas can also be found in plain green covers, overprinted for Century Oils Ltd (as listed above), but still carrying the National logo on the flysheet. Century was an independent lubricant specialist, later bought by Germany's Fuchs, with no connection to National or BP, which was by then National's parent company.

The main maps were also used in the hardback Shell Touring atlas sold by Philip's (and reprinted in very large numbers for BCA Book Club edition). This was prefaced by an extensive gazetteer and touring section, illustrated with black & white photos. Philip's are not thought to have used this style of cartography on atlases for any other petrol companies, although they did use it on sheet maps for Gulf, Jet and Total.