In the 1690s, after more than a century of rapid growth, London emerged as the largest city of Christian Europe. The Crown's heavy demands for war finance created an innovative tax regime, the local records of which provide for the first time a comprehensive picture of the social and economic geography of the English capital. Earlier taxation records omit a substantial proportion of the total number of households in London or provide only a crude indication of their relative wealth. The aim of the project was to construct a `snapshot' of London based on the surviving returns of the `aids' levied in 1693-4, which record rental values for houses and other properties, and the value of the stock in trade of many householders for the entire metropolitan area north of the Thames. The method was to construct a series of databases from the manuscript returns and to provide a series of computer-based analytical tools, including a cartographic framework for spatial analysis, thus creating a directory and gazetteer of lasting value as a research tool. A further aim was to undertake extensive analysis of the material and to publish the results, principally in the form of a social atlas of the metropolis. Location; title of householder; first name; last name; property type; assessed tax on rent; assessed tax on stock; landlord; occupation; miscellaneous information.