Maps of Gormenghast

The problem with Gormenghast (the trilogy of books by Mervyn Peake) is that there isn't really any official maps of the castle and region.

For those that don't know, Gormenghast is a huge castle depicted in the series of books by Mervyn Peake which were incredibly influential on other writers during the latter half of the 20th century.

So influential that it got a BBC mini series in the early 2000s. (The image on the above right is a depiction of the huge castle that was shown in the BBC version.)

The castle is effectly the size of a city. Not a small city either. Much bigger than that. Simply massive.

Due to the lack of official maps various people have made their own versions of what they think the castle might look like on a map, sometimes with their depictions suggesting something similar to the Forbidden City in China.

But they all, in my opinion, fall short of depicting the massive size of Gormenghast. The thing that people seem to forget is that Gormenghast should have a population of 10s of thousands of people, but only about 10% of the castle is actually occupied. Many of the rooms and buildings within Gormenghast have been abandoned for generations. So if there was say 40,000 people living there, the castle itself should be big enough to house 400,000 people.

For a context a small city of 40,000 people still takes up a good chunk of space. Thus Gormenghast should be roughly 10 times the size of a small city.

The maps below thus aren't really an accurate depiction to the true scale of Gormenghast. It should be tens of miles across, not just a few miles.

The above one basically copies the look of the Forbidden City in China.