Maps

List of Maps

The map series that have been digitised for the West of England region are:

  • Tithe maps (c.1840s)
  • Enclosure maps (c.18th-19th century, excluding Wiltshire and Devon)
  • OS maps (25” 1st, 2nd, 3rd / revised editions c.1880s – 1930s)
  • OS Town Plans (1:500, c.1890s)
  • Goad Fire Insurance plans for Bristol, Bath & Gloucester, Exeter & Plymouth (late 19th century)
  • National Grid sheets (c.postwar-1965).

Maps not included

Gaps in map coverage have been caused by a number of different reasons, including where maps for that area in that particular map series either: do not exist, are still in copyright, we do not have permission to use, they are the wrong scale for the project, or they do not consistently cover the West of England area and so have not been selected for this project.

Map Suppliers

We have worked with a range of partners to prepare and supply maps for the West of England:

The British Library and National Library Scotland provided 6924 digitised and georectified Ordnance Survey map series to the project, and a small number of missing map sheets were supplied late in the project by the Bodleian Library. The 2nd edition O.S. maps for Devon were supplied by Devon County Council.

Seven regional archives Bath Records Office, Devon Archives, Gloucestershire Archives, Somerset Archives, Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre, Wells County Council and South Somerset District Council have provided access to historic tithe, enclosure and other maps from their collections, and secured permission from the copyright holders for them to be included in the project. Basic conservation care was given to make fragile maps stable enough to move and photograph. Making the maps digitally accessible online is also indirectly aiding conservation through reduced need to physically handle the original documents in archives.

ICAM Archives Ltd were commissioned to digitally photograph and supply these map files to the project. Some of these maps are very large and unwieldy, so have had to be photographed in sections which are later stitched together using graphic software.

Volunteers – Between November 2015 and July 2017 an estimated 70 individuals volunteered for the project and have spent 4946 hours or 707 days preparing historic map images to be added onto Know Your Place. Equivalent to £106,050 in-kind contribution to the project, their work exceeded the project target by about 50 days’ work and is testament both to their dedication and the scale of the work they faced. Tithe maps for Somerset were prepared by volunteers managed independently by the South West Heritage Trust.

Ongoing map work in 2017

Our original list of 1462 maps to be prepared by volunteers also increased, to an actual total of 1977 maps across the region once outliers and multiple sheets per map were counted. Each of these requires individual cropping and georeferencing individually – resulting in an addition of almost one-third to the project workload!

At the project conclusion in July 2017 there were still an estimated c.100 days’ volunteer work remaining to complete processing all the maps, before they can be cached and published online. Our project team and volunteers remain committed to completing preparing these maps and caching them onto Know Your Place as soon as we can, so watch this space as more basemap layers appear on Know Your Place during Summer and Autumn 2017.