ON THE RECORD
The National Library of Scotland has finished its three-year project to digitise Ordnance Survey maps
Current news and data releases
People are loving being able to go back in time and see how things change
A complete collection of historic maps of England and Wales is now available to view online for free.
The National Library of Scotland (NLS) began digitising its collection of Ordnance Survey 25 inch to the mile maps of England and Wales in 2014 to complement its Scottish collection.
After three years of work, library and external staff have scanned 89,800 map sheets, dating from 1841 to 1952. They completed the English maps in July and the Welsh maps in August.
“For us it’s a great way to make the collection more accessible,” Laragh Quinney, Maps Reading Room Manager at NLS, told Who Do You Think You Are?
Magazine. “They’re such fascinating maps and there’s so much detail too. We’re getting really positive feedback. People are loving being able to go back in time and see how things change and develop.”
The maps are the most detailed topographic maps available from this period. They allow family historians to see the local features that their ancestors would have experienced, including buildings, streets, railways, industrial premises, parkland, farms, woodland, and rivers.
The collection is so detailed that it shows divisions between houses along terraces and the precise location of civil parish or municipal ward boundaries.
As the 25 inch sheets had more space for the mapmakers, all place names and street names are easier to read, and the precise locations of many smaller features such as projecting bay windows and steps can be seen. The coloured, first edition maps also distinguish between buildings constructed of brick or stone (shown in red) and buildings constructed of timber or metal (shown in grey), a useful detail not found on any other OS map series.
The maps were also often used for land valuation or registration purposes, so other records and old title deeds often refer to the specific numbered land parcels on the 25 inch maps.
They have all been scanned in colour at 400 dpi (dots per inch), making them easier to view and enabling users to zoom in on specific details.
Unusual finds in the map include a star-shaped duck pond in Northamptonshire and a maze in the grounds of Beauport Park, Sussex.
“It’s really diverse what people use those maps for,” Laragh Quinney added. “They’re brilliant for local history and family history.”
The remit of the OS 25 inch series was to include all inhabited and cultivated parts of the country. Only a few upland areas in Wales, the Pennines and Dartmoor were not mapped at the 25 inch to the mile scale. All areas were mapped twice, with a first edition dating between the 1840s and the 1880s, and a second edition between around 1890 and 1910. Some urban areas undergoing more change have a third or fourth edition running up to the Second World War. The maps are therefore useful in showing change over time, and can allow better links to be made with other records.
They are searchable as individual sheets using a zoomable map of England and Wales and in an alphabetical index by county. The 1890s-1920s maps are also presented on a seamless zoomable overlay layer on modern satellite images and OS maps.
NLS staff have added a georeference layer, allowing seamless viewing of all the maps, for southern England, and hope to add one for the rest of the country.
NLS has already digitised the 25 inch maps of Scotland and the less detailed six inch to the mile maps. The next planned step is to add the more recent 1:25 000 and 1:50 000 OS maps of Scotland.
To view the maps, go to maps.nls.uk/os/25inchengland-and-wales.