15 February 2012
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More Ordnance Survey county maps for Scotland go online
National Library of Scotland has announced that a further 25,000 Ordnance Survey maps of Scotland have gone online, taking its historic mapping through to the 1960s. ...
The National Library of Scotland has made available a further 25,000 detailed Ordnance Survey maps of Scotland to its Maps of Scotland website. This includes two main map series – the six-inch (1:10,560) and 25 inch (1:2,500) to the mile maps, both dating between 1892 and 1960. The first edition OS maps at both of these scales (1840s to 1880s) are already on our website, and this new website addition therefore completes the availability of the OS County Series maps for Scotland, some 40,000 map sheets in total.
These maps are of value for both local and family history and the detailed 25 inch to the mile maps allow specific features to be seen more clearly in urban areas, as well as greater detail for buildings and railways. Every road, railway, field, fence, wall, stream and building is shown, even including smaller features such as letter boxes, bollards on quaysides, mile posts, and flag-staffs. Cultivated and uncultivated land is distinguished into different categories, as are different types of woodland.
The six-inch to the mile series (7,486 map sheets) covers all of Scotland, and all sheets were revised between 1892 and 1907. Thereafter, urban or rapidly changing areas were updated up to the 1950s. The 25 inch series (17,466 map sheets) just covers what Ordnance Survey considered to be the more inhabited regions of Scotland, less than half the total land area. Again, all sheets were revised between 1892 and 1907, with selective updates to more populous areas thereafter.
The website allows easy access to the maps by a zoomable Google map interface, a gazetteer of place names, and counties and parishes. There are guides to abbreviations on the maps, and further information on the history of the series, map content, projections and meridians.
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