Vintage maps

[Crackle]

I was just wondering if there were others on here who are fascinated by old maps.
I find it incredible how accurate they have been made when you compare them to modern maps which have used GPS, computers, and Satellite imagery..
I came upon this site which allows you to slide between and overlay a Victorian map of England and a modern map.
https://www.archiuk.com/cgi-bin/build_nl...n,%20Essex&os_series=1&latitude=51.573321&longitude=0.495056&postcode=

This link should take you direct to a 1950's 60's OS map.
https://www.archiuk.com/cgi-bin/build_nl...n,%20Essex&os_series=7&latitude=51.573321&longitude=0.495056&postcode=

have fun

Mike

[ppppenguin]

Many years ago I got a copy of the David & Charles facsimile edition of the OS map c1890 for NW London. Some features, such as railway lines, are largely unchanged between then and now but the North Circular Road was many years in the future.

To the west of London, on low lying ground near Hounslow Heath there's a hamlet. Its name is Heath Row. Two separate words. Not hard to guess what's there now.

Hounslow Heath is important in the history of OS because that's where the original baseline was tediously measured using rods.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_...at_Britain

[Crackle]

I came across a 1836 Admiralty chart of the Thames Sea Reach, scanned it in sections, stitched together and added it to my mapping and navigation software I used when sailing.
I calibrated the map by using 9 landmarks like churches and such which have not changed position over the years.
I then traced around the coastline of the modern map and overlaid the breadcrumb trail onto the 1836 chart.
Although there had been a lot of movement in the sandbanks, as there always is from year to year, the outline of the coast was incredibly accurate.
My hat goes of to those talented navigators of yesteryear who charted the waters and land across the UK..
   

Mike

[peter scott]

Yes old maps are fascinating. I am a bit spoilt. I live less than 10 minutes walk from the Map Room of the NLS. The slider between different map dates is good.

Here's question that came up recently on another forum just to test your general knowledge:

"Which line of Longitude is the Datum for the UK National Grid?"

Peter

[Brunel]

e.g.

https://maps.nls.uk/os/6inch-england-and...index.html


https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=17&lat=54.08834&lon=-1.76276&layers=171&right=BingHyb

[Crackle]

The British national Grid starts about 80 km to the West of the Silly Isles, I would hazard a guess at 7.5 degrees west of Greenwich.

   

Mike

[Richard_FM]

I like to look at old maps as well.

I have a nice one of Leicestershire which used to belong to my Gran. When her house was being cleared I asked if I could have it as a memento.

A while back I saw a map of Manchester which was interesting as it was made when they city had grown due to the industrial revolution but not many railways had been built.

[ppppenguin]

The British national Grid starts about 80 km to the West of the Silly Isles, I would hazard a guess at 7.5 degrees west of Greenwich.



Mike

For some obscure reason the GPS prime meridian is about 100 yards away from the Greenwich prime meridian. But that's tiny compared to the long and acrimonious dispute between London and Paris as to whose prime meridian was to be used. London won because most chart makers were London based.

[Richard_FM]

In the Tintin book Red Reckham's Treasure there's some confusion as the co-ordinates they have discovered for a sunken galleon off the coast of an island don't seem to fit, but they work out that Captain Haddock's ancestor used a French chart to calculate the co-ordinates.

[peter scott]

"In 1494 the first prime meridian was drawn through the Azores islands by the crowns of Portugal and Castile under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, as the two kingdoms wrangled over possession of the globe in the aftermath of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America. This artificial division of the earth became a feature of the subsequent trading of territories between rival kingdoms. By 1884, as a result of the British Empire's commercial pre-eminence, the globe's prime meridian was definitively drawn through Greenwich. By 1938 the line two degrees west was chosen as England's prime meridian running as it did through most of the country, from Berwick-Upon-Tweed on the Northumbrian coast to the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset.
Guided by his Ordnance Survey map, Nicholas Crane's book Two Degrees West walks the longitudinal tightrope of this most manmade of geographical lines, stretching nearly 600 kilometres from north to south, never deviating more than a few metres either side of the meridian. The result is a diverse cross-section of England in the late 1990s, from the bleak agrarian world of Northumbria and the Pennines to the racial and urban hybridity of the Black Country. Two Degrees West is an idiosyncratic, offbeat travel book, offering a unique view on the state of the nation at the end of the 1990s."