MAPS, GAZETTEERS AND DIRECTORIES

Many free resources can help us to understand the environment within which our ancestors lived. The National Library of Scotland’s site maps.nls.uk provides five centuries of Scottish mapping, but also offers Ordnance Survey maps for England and Wales. A Vision of Britain Through Time has good coverage for Britain also at visionofbritain.org.uk, with accompanying gazetteer entries, while Northern Ireland is well served by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland’s Historical Maps viewer at bit.ly/proni-maps. Various regional mapping projects also exist, such as Know your Place for the west of England ( kypwest.

org.uk). Disasters also generated resources, such as the fireinsurance maps at the British Library website ( bit.ly/fire-maps), and the Bombsight project illustrating where bombs landed during the London Blitz ( bombsight.org).

For gazetteers, British History Online ( british-history.ac.uk) offers topographical dictionaries of England, Scotland and Wales at bit.ly/topographical, while the Irish equivalent is available on Google Books ( books.google.co.uk). Various Scottish gazetteers are freely available at bit.ly/nls-gazetteers.

Trade directories can also helpfully plot the location of people before the censuses and between them. English and Welsh directories from the 1760s to 1910 can be freely consulted at the University of Leicester’s Historical Directories website ( bit.ly/leicester-directories), while Scottish Post Office directories are available at digital.nls.uk/directories.

For Belfast and Northern Ireland, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has various 19th-century volumes ( bit.ly/proni-streets) while Mary Lennon’s site fills in some gaps and extends coverage into the 20th century ( lennonwylie.co.uk).