Best Websites
Maps provide a window on the physical environment in which your ancestors lived and worked, writes
Our experts share the best free sources of historic maps
There are thousands of sites that provide access to digitised historic maps, many of them free. Once you’ve found the region, town, village or street where a relation lived, you can follow the trail back through county, Ordnance Survey (OS), valuation or estate maps. These can reveal land use and ownership, and, in their most detailed form, give you the footprint of buildings, small structures and even trees, wells and paths.
Many county archives have digitised their tithe maps, while others have reproduced estate collections, or, in the case of Berkshire’s dated but still functioning berkshire enclosure. org.uk, enclosure maps.
National collections include the British Library ( bl.uk/subjects/maps) and the Bodleian Library’s Map Room ( bodleian.ox.ac.uk/maps). British History Online ( british-history.ac.uk/catalogue/maps) has maps of London and the six-inches-to-the-mile OS series, while TNA has a helpful research guide: nationalarchives. gov.uk/maps/maps-family-local-history.htm.