Old maps

[Tim Hall]

Following on from Wow's thread about his Bacon map, but not wanting to clutter up the GPS board, here's a new thread.

I turned up a handful of Bartholomew half inch maps from the 1950s amongst the tqt that Dad left behind. I gave them to another forumite, but then she didn't need them any more, so kindly returned them.  One of them was for Exmoor, so I pondered it idly before cycling to Devon in the summer. On it I spotted a series of pencil marks like this:



That's where he rode his motorbike, which he described in his autobiography which he wrote for the family:

The next day was still dry and it was then the turn of the keen trials riders. I was asked whether I would act as a marshall on some of the hill climb sections. One famous old hill was the old road from Porlock right up to the heights of Exmoor known as Doverhay. It was once a proper road but just before WW2 it got badly washed out in a rainstorm. Because it was so steep and there were now better roads in the area it was never repaired, so it reverted to being a steep stony track absolutely ideal as a test hill for slightly deranged trials riders!
I surprised myself by riding up this formidable hill to my appointed position with only making a couple of dabs to steady myself as I scrambled up the loose and stony surface. Very few of even the experienced riders managed to make it clean without losing any points.

In another box of bits and pieces there was this one:

Ordnance Survey One Inch, printed 1929, complete with holes. My current palatial abode is on the bottom edge, so I've bought a huge frame so I can hang it on the wall, if the frame ever arrives.

[Mrs Pingu]

An artist I follow, Frank To, has been doing some rather nice arty things with charcoal and gunpowder on some ancient maps.
I particularly liked the otters he posted on the 12th Nov.
https://www.facebook.com/FrankToArtist

[Tim Hall]

Ooh, that is rather good.

[Butterfly]

One of my employers had a copy of the 1746 John Rocque map of London on their wall. It was huge, taking up the entire wall (it was like wall paper), and really beautiful. I spent hours studying it. I'd love a copy of that, but I don't think I have a large enough bit of clear wall.

[andyoxon]

Some good online old map sites:

https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/maps/
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore

[Wowbagger]

My good pal Penelope has a very large collection of OS maps of various vintages. She was a librarian in Southend Central Library for quite a few years and often retrieved maps when they were taken out of circulation and replaced.

i also have quite a few Bartholomew maps, which I think are the ideal scale for cycling. They've got all the detail you need at ½" to a mile.

[Wowbagger]

https://map-of-essex.uk/

1777 map of Essex by Chapman & André. My parents' last house is marked on that, although it's not there now.

[RichForrest]

I like this site http://www.oldmapsonline.org/
Can get lost for days on there 

[FifeingEejit]

I've got a growing collection of them.
The 1920s/30s Scottish ones are of some interest as there was significant construction going on, I've managed to get a selection of Glen Coe with the Telford and newer road on them.
I've also got a couple of maps of the Tummel Valley pre-hydro scheme, one with the outline of the hydro scheme drawn on it.

I've just gone and spaffed 122 quid on some 1890s to 1950s maps, mostly the 1920s Scottish poular edition.

[TimC]

https://map-of-essex.uk/

1777 map of Essex by Chapman & André. My parents' last house is marked on that, although it's not there now.

Intereting. My old house at Henny Street would have been around 400 years old at the time this map was created, but it's not there!

[Davef]

https://map-of-essex.uk/

1777 map of Essex by Chapman & André. My parents' last house is marked on that, although it's not there now.

Intereting. My old house at Henny Street would have been around 400 years old at the time this map was created, but it's not there!

I don’t think it is showing all houses. The population was around 8m at the time of the map.

[MikeFromLFE]

I can't think that I've ever thrown out any of the paper maps I've used for cycling.
So somewhere I've got a selection of Bartholemews maps from the 1970s covering most of England, and I know where all my Michelin maps with my 1972 & 3 tours marked on them are. There's also the OS maps - red covers - for the Midlands, some in quite a parlous state of overuse.
Physical maps are great for armchair travelling, and we lose a lot by /only/ using the digital ones

[robgul]

https://map-of-essex.uk/

1777 map of Essex by Chapman & André. My parents' last house is marked on that, although it's not there now.

Two old houses that I lived in are marked - one at Thaxted and the other at Nazeing.  Ah, nostalgia.

[Jurek]

From Sanfords I managed to score some reproduction OS maps from round here, when it was all fields an' trees. 1870s to 1900s.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Nothing that old or with a family connection but I've got a map of the Austro-Hungarian empire on the wall above my desk. The scale is in kilometres, geographical miles and Austrian miles. The Austrian mile was huge! I have a feeling it might have been part of a guidebook.

[fimm]

My father has slowly been collecting OS 1 inch to a mile 7th series (i.e. 1950s - 60s I think?) on cloth. (He also has the majority of the OS1:50 000 maps). He has a few random older ones too.

(Edited for spelling)

[Zipperhead]

Nothing that old or with a family connection but I've got a map of the Austro-Hungarian empire on the wall above my desk. The scale is in kilometres, geographical miles and Austrian miles. The Austrian mile was huge! I have a feeling it might have been part of a guidebook.

24,000 feet apparently

[Cudzoziemiec]

  It says on the map Austrian mile = 4,000 [somethings]. I can't quite read the word but it certainly isn't klafter. But the map is printed in Polish so I guess it's a translation (it looks like ścinki, which would be something like "cuttings"").

[Tim Hall]

This is in the front papers of Patterson's Roads, 18 edition. Here's a description I found on the interwebs:

    It is an attempt, as far as the nature of the work will allow, to Map the ground…

So declares Edward Mogg in the Preface to the final edition of Paterson’s Roads, possibly the closest thing the nineteenth century ever got to Google Street View. The book — which ran to eighteen editions from 1771 to 1829 — is designed to guide the journeyer along the major roads of England and Wales, helping them not only to get from A to B but to appreciate the landmarks along the way. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the book is how very few maps it contains, giving a far from complete coverage of England and Wales. The vast majority of its huge amount of information is textual, and the book starts as it means to go on, with a densely informative index of roads and towns.

It belonged to my great great grandfather.

[Jurek]

This is in the front papers of Patterson's Roads, 18 edition. Here's a description I found on the interwebs:

    It is an attempt, as far as the nature of the work will allow, to Map the ground…

So declares Edward Mogg in the Preface to the final edition of Paterson’s Roads, possibly the closest thing the nineteenth century ever got to Google Street View. The book — which ran to eighteen editions from 1771 to 1829 — is designed to guide the journeyer along the major roads of England and Wales, helping them not only to get from A to B but to appreciate the landmarks along the way. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the book is how very few maps it contains, giving a far from complete coverage of England and Wales. The vast majority of its huge amount of information is textual, and the book starts as it means to go on, with a densely informative index of roads and towns.

It belonged to my great great grandfather.

Ver' cool.

[slope]

Some good online old map sites:

https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/maps/
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore

The latter of those two links has given me hours upon hours of pleasure.

Mentioning it to my my neighbour resulted in her memory going "zing" and rooting out a 1915 Caernarvonshire XXVIII.2 25" and 1900 Caernarvonshire XXII.15 25" maps (where we live) wot were rolled awfully tight in a tube and had lived in her loft for many many years. (Paper size: Grand Eagle 28¾" x 42")

These were missing from the www.nls.uk collection. So I contacted them to see if they were interested. Yes they says please please. But warned it might not safe to post it to them - in case it got lost or damaged for ever!

I found a local place in Porthmadog who could scan A3 for £12. But when I emailed the resultant B&W .pdf to www.nls.uk it didn't meet their understandably strict and specific requirements to include it on their interactive data base.

They then provided their scanning criteria, but the shop in Porthmadog couldn't do colour and the very specific colour profiling to meet the NLS needs.

I hope one day to find another printer locally who could do the biz according to NLS spec - or find myself going to Glasgow in person.

It is after all a fab city

ps both maps helped me locate and uncover (literally, as grown over in ancient moss), 2 x Ordnance Survey benchmarks, not listed in any current online records

[phantasmagoriana]

I, too, have spent far too long on the https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore website!

Looking at old maps is fascinating - I have a few of my local area and beyond. I've also got a (reproduction, sadly) Godfrey map showing my immediate area in Victorian times, which is really interesting.

I hope one day to find another printer locally who could do the biz according to NLS spec - or find myself going to Glasgow in person.

NLS is in Edinburgh, isn't it?

[slope]

NLS is in Edinburgh, isn't it?

Oops! So it is

[Tim Hall]

NLS is in Edinburgh, isn't it?

Oops! So it is

Such information might be on a map, old or new...

[andytheflyer]

In my working career as a geologist, we were forever poring over old maps when looking for previous uses of an industrial site up for redevelopment.  It's difficult to know what contaminants to test for if you don't know the previous uses. 

I spent hours poring over those old maps,  absolutely fascinating what you can find.