View Online How many are online? None Some All. Order copies We can either copy our records onto paper or deliver them to you digitally. Visit us in Kew Visit us in Kew to see original documents or view online records for free. Pay for research Consider paying for research. Contents 1.
Why use this guide? Ordnance Survey maps held elsewhere and published online 3. Ordnance Survey maps at The National Archives 4. Place names and topographical features 6. Parish, county and other public boundaries 7. Other administrative and technical records 8. Staff records 9. Further reading. Ordnance Survey maps held elsewhere and published online For published Ordnance Survey maps you should head elsewhere before searching at The National Archives as our collection is not comprehensive and you are less likely to find a published map here than online or at libraries and other archives, including local archives.
Ordnance Survey maps at The National Archives The National Archives, though not the routine place of deposit for published Ordnance Survey maps see the Legal Deposit Libraries in section 2 for this does, however, hold many Ordnance Survey maps used during the working life of various government departments.
How to find Ordnance Survey maps at The National Archives There is no single, comprehensive index of Ordnance Survey maps held here so to find a map you will need to try one of the following search methods: 4.
The following series all contain variations of the Object Name Books described above — click on the references to learn more about each series and to search for name books within them: Parish Name Books in OS 23 search by county and parish Original Name Books for Cumberland, Durham, Hampshire, Northumberland and Westmorland in OS 34 search by county and parish One-Inch Scale Name Books in OS 50 for and OS 52 for search by county 6.
Parish, county and other public boundaries As well as producing maps, the Ordnance Survey, from , was responsible for the Public Boundary Archive for Great Britain. Other administrative and technical records 7. Read How to find records of Treasury letters and papers for information 7. During the Great War, mapmakers were posted overseas and, under appalling conditions, made and printed millions of maps for the allies. Amid reform, Victorians had a real need for accurate mapping and, after years of disagreements, several different scales of maps were agreed, including six inches to the mile for mountain and moorland, 25 inches to the mile for rural areas, right up to ten and a half feet to the mile for built-up areas.
Zincography using zinc sheets began to replace lithography using stone as a method of printing, with copper plate engravings still used for the one inch maps. Photography was introduced to the map making process in by Sir Henry James. He later claimed to have invented photozincography a photographic method of producing printing plates although it had been developed by two of his staff.
James welcomed international interest and made all inventions, mathematical tables and scientific data openly available, even publishing a book on the subject. Colour map printing was introduced to the one-inch map in while in , Ordnance Survey employed women for the first time, to mount and colour maps. The 20th century brought more cyclists and motorists onto the roads and ramblers into the countryside. Working in appalling conditions, surveyors plotted the lines of trenches and, for the first time, aerial photography was used to capture survey information.
After the War, thoughts turned to marketing the maps to engage a new wave of outdoor enthusiasts. A professional artist was appointed to produce eye-catching covers for the one-inch maps. In , the Retriangulation of Great Britain began. Thousands of Trig Pillars were built on inhospitable peaks to serve as solid triangulation points. When the Second World War broke out, focus turned to the military.
By , million maps had been produced for the war effort. A whole raft of new legislation, and rapid development after the Great War, brought demands for accurate, up-to-date mapping.
Surveyors began the Olympian task, building the now-familiar concrete triangulation pillars on hilltops and mountains throughout Britain. Surveyors dragged heavy loads of materials over isolated land by lorry, packhorse and sheer brute force.
They had to go down as much as 15 feet under the surface to secure them in place. It was a rugged life for the surveyors with few home comforts. Wet clothing, frozen fingers and bleary eyes caused by long hours of observing were the order of the day and night.
Around 6, Trig Pillars were put up in prominent positions around the country, and many remain in the landscape today. These shining white monoliths supported theodolites and were intervisible, with surveyors standing at one pillar to observe lights on others. Ordnance Survey was set on course for the 20th Century. The metric national grid reference system was launched, together with the scale series of maps.
Yet a darker period loomed as the Second World War broke out. Not only that, its Southampton HQ was bombed and badly damaged. Staff were relocated to the Home Counties where they produced scale maps of France, Italy, Germany and most of the rest of Europe in preparation for invasion.
Until the s, all Director Generals held an army rank. In the event of a major war, Ordnance Survey would limit its civilian activities and concentrate on military work. The military appetite was insatiable: The Normandy Landings alone devoured million maps, and a total of million were produced for the entire war effort. In peacetime again, Ordnance Survey was back to business as usual.
A resurvey of larger towns and cities at the new scale of corrected past inaccuracies and mapped wartime destruction. Then things moved on apace. The digital age began, and with it, the first computerised large-scale maps appeared. They are used for a surveying practice known as triangulation : if you know the length of one side of a triangle, and its internal angles, you can calculate the other two lengths mathematically using trigonometry. By creating a network of triangles across a landscape and measuring the angles, surveyors can calculate distances over the ground without having to measure them directly.
This theodolite was used to make the measurements that underpinned the first accurate maps of the nation, a project known as the Principal Triangulation of Great Britain. Precision was key, particularly as its users needed to account for the curvature of the Earth in their calculations. The Ordnance Survey is so-called because it was founded by the Board of Ordnance, the government department responsible for equipping the military.
Chances are, if you're a regular walker, you will stride out safe in the knowledge that an Ordnance Survey map secreted about your person means you'll know exactly where and when you got lost. The history of the organisation known as OS is not merely that of a group of earnest blokes with a penchant for triangulation and an ever-present soundtrack of rustling cagoules.
From its roots in military strategy to its current incarnation as producer of the rambler's navigational aid, the government-owned company has been checking and rechecking all , sq km 93, sq miles of Great Britain for years.
Here are some of the more peculiar elements in the past of the famous map-makers. In the final years of the 18th Century, Europe was in turmoil.
England was braced for invasion by the French and the government's Board of Ordnance a body responsible for supplying equipment to the Army and Navy and generally defending the realm needed accurate maps so it could position its troops effectively. When World War One broke out, map-makers were posted overseas to replace existing French maps, which were too small in scale and imprecise.
Over the course of the war the teams produced at least 25 million battlefield maps for use by British troops, and a total of million for the entire war effort. In the late s and early s, teams of tape-measure wielding men swarmed around the country with big pointy arrows. They were urban surveyors using fixed features such as the corners of buildings as markers for map-making. These markers were called "revision points", and photographs were taken - often with amused or bemused onlookers - to keep track of where these points were.
Education manager at OS, Elaine Owen, has made some of the images taken in Manchester available online. She says they show "a treasure-trove of images which illustrate everyday life while surveyors were going about their daily business".
We'd love people to visit the website and search the places and streets they know to see if they recognise anyone, or even themselves. That would be fantastic. The household items we miss the most. The man who saved Flying Scotsman. The Great Pretender: England on film. Some of the oldest photographs of Stonehenge were bound in a book in and recently unearthed from the OS archives.
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