HOW CONTEMPORARY MAPS CAN HELP YOUR RESEARCH

Maps generally fall into two categories: those that stand alone and those where supplementary information complements the map information.  Virtually all maps were developed for very specific reasons; they were not developed solely for family historians.

Initially, you may use a map to locate a parish. The Phillimore Atlas of Parish Registers has many excellent maps showing parish locations in outline, enabling you to easily determine contiguous parishes. The guide also reproduces a version of an old county map devised around 1834 so that you get some idea of the geography at the time.

When reseraching ancestors who lived in large cities, it is useful to use a parish street map as these show the streets within a particular parish - civil or ecclesiastical. This is important when establishing which church was nearest to where your ancestor lived.

These large-scale maps could even pinpoint the exact position of the house in which your ancestors lived. It would be unwise, for example, in finding a family in the 1911 census, to then ignore the maps and information which exist within the records of the 1910 Valuation Survey as this will enable a census address to translate to a real property.

Between 1910 and 1915, surveyors went all over the country, surveying and making value assessments of all property in Britain. This information is in field survey books created by the surveyors. By examining these books, you can find out what your ancestors house was built of, sometimes see a floor layout of the accommodation and even establish the condition of the fabric. Many of these records are now available online but the complete records are held by the National Archives.

During your research you will realise that older, more specialised maps and estate plans become a valuable resource as they show detailed information relative to the time period; they also give useful clues in many diagrams which relate to family mobility. They show where roads, railways, canals and rivers were - some of which no longer exist - and these in turn can point to likely migration routes. The National Archives, the British Library, many university libraries, all county record offices and many local studies libraries all have significant holdings of maps and plans covering a few hundred years.

The use of a contemporary map in research is fairly easy and therefore becomes as essential as looking at primary record sources such as civil registration, census returns and parish registers. However, a word of caution is necessary for various reasons. Modern maps can be misleading - street names can change, urban developments incorporate original rural areas and some urban areas are redeveloped completely. Equally, reservoirs can bury whole villages and aspects of the landscape may have altered significantly. There are various resources online for older maps, and historical maps can also be bought, so it is reasonably easy to build a visual panorama of your ancestor’s environment.

Maps help bring names, dates and places alive. They allow you to pinpoint a place, particularly if a hamlet or village has changed its name. When borders and boundaries changed, so did place names. Maps can also reveal what life was like in your ancestor’s local area. Topographical maps show the natural features of an area, such as hills, valleys, forests, or river estuaries. By analysing a topographic map, you can visualise whether it would have been easy or difficult for an ancestor to farm the land or have easy access to the closest town. Maps often help you find additional family history resources by revealing which administrative districts covered the area where your ancestors lived. 

Most nineteenth-century maps are based on the Ordnance Survey. This organisation was established in 1791 and has its roots in military mapping of coastal defences of the country, especially south-east England in view of the threat of invasion from France.  To create these maps covering the whole country using the trigonometrical system took the best part of eighty years,  but these are the most accurate planimetric and topographical maps. There have been several series of OS maps produced over the years in various scales ranging from the popular one inch series to the large scale 1:500th series which shows significant detail. Most urban areas are detailed on larger scale maps with rural areas to a smaller scale. Most specialist maps are overlaid Ordnance Survey maps.

The National Farm Survey was undertaken during the Second World War and will be of interest to family historians with farming and rural ancestors. The survey is dated 4 April 1941 and can be construed as a valuable substitute (albeit incomplete) for the national census of that year which was postponed because of the war. The survey was done to help promote the better use of agricultural land and increase food and crop production during the war.  The survey maps are fairly large scale for rural areas and show the extent of farm and land ownership. Like most surveys they have supplementary written information which includes the name of owner or tenant, length of occupation, condition and extent of the buildings and soil usage.  The records are held at the National Archives.

Most of us will have ancestors who served in the armed forces throughout the First World War. Alongside surviving service records and the regimental war diaries, there is a series of trench maps which exist at either 1:10000 or 1:20000 scales. These give visual details of the trenches used by both the British Expeditionary Force and the German forces, and provide a detailed picture of the terrain in which our military ancestors fought. 

Finding an ancestor in London is often difficult around the turn of the twentieth century. But even maps can help you in your research. The Maps Descriptive of London Poverty is a series of maps created by Charles Booth. He was a Liverpool ship owner who came to London. He carried out his inquiry into life and labour in London between 1886 and 1903. These colour-coded maps of Victorian London, more commonly known as Charles Booth's Poverty Maps, and are based on Stanford’s Library Map of London and Suburbs at a scale of 6 inches to 1 mile (1:10560). 

The Descriptive Map of London Poverty surveyed between 1898-1899 is a great research tool and available digitally online at http://booth.lse.ac.uk supported by very informative notebooks. The Charles Booth Archive can be searched by name, street or occupation and is free to use. Each street is a different colour which indicates both the income and social class of its inhabitants.

• Lowest class. -  black - vicious, semi-criminal     
• Very poor, casual. - dark blue - chronic want     
  • Poor -  light blue - earnings about eighteen to twenty-one shillings per week for a moderate family 
• Mixed - purple - some comfortable, others poor 
• Fairly comfortable - pink - good ordinary earnings 
• Middle class - red - well-to-do     
• Upper-middle and upper classes - yellow - wealthy 
•  

A combination of colours indicates that a street contains a number of each of the classes represented by those colours. The maps relate to an area from Hammersmith in the west, to Greenwich in the east, and from Hampstead in the north to Clapham in the south.

The Goad Insurance Plans produced between 1885 and the 1970s cover most of the important towns and cities of the British Isles and provide a record of an individual’s buildings and businesses within any given street. They were produced to a fairly large scale of 1:480 and were frequently revised with overlaid information. Their prime purpose was to identify the extent of an insured property, however, they can be a valuable source for family historians enabling them to identify premises by name.

Two significant and useful map series for the early to mid-1800s are those which were produced for Land Enclosure and Tithe Redemption. They are well worth exploring.

For about 100 years from 1760, various Enclosure Acts redistributed land to large landowners, resulting in many small landowners losing their property rights.  Large-scale maps and accompanying schedules of named owners were made and can be seen at both The National Archives and within county record offices. The earliest maps are especially useful as these pre-date the modern Ordnance Survey maps. 

When the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 converted tithes to monetary payments, mapping surveys and schedules were carried out to calculate new charges.  Most of these maps were made within the ten-year period from 1840 to 1850. They are large-scale maps, often twenty-six inches to the mile, and show buildings and land boundaries complemented by the apportionments of ownership and tenancy. This was the most detailed survey since Domesday but did not extend to many urban areas. Some parishes did not get surveyed. Two copies were always made, one being deposited in the county record office, the other at the National Archives.

As the Industrial Revolution got underway, applications were made for the construction of canals, railways and roads; these applications required the approval of various authorities from Parliament downwards. These applications were generally supported by finely detailed maps which may have been enrolled in local Quarter Sessions and also deposited with other supporting documentation for the schemes.

If your ancestor worked for a landed estate owner, it is more than likely that the estate plans still exist within the estate archive.  Detail, scale and accuracy will vary significantly but often supporting information may include tenant lists. Most of these maps ceased to exist after the 1870s as they were replaced by the larger scale Ordnance Survey maps which subsequently became commonplace; much earlier than that, they may have formed part of a manorial survey.

Ordnance Surveys maps have been used by some public bodies, other cartographers and commercial map-makers as base mapping. The Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty mapped the seas and produced a myriad of maps and charts which are useful when investigating the history of ports or visualising the coastal areas, particularly if coastal erosion has taken place since.

From a research viewpoint, you may ask yourself how trustworthy are maps? We want to know that its features are an accurate representation of what is on the ground, but sometimes we will need to confirm its information from other sources. The authenticity of a map also depends on who made it and for what purpose.

As you research your ancestry back in time, maps in various guises are still available, mainly for towns and sometimes generated by various Government departments such as the Board of Health. Whatever period you are researching, always enquire at your record office about which contemporary maps are available and use them together with other historical documents. Knowledge of the geography of an area in a specific period can always help you resolve the challenges besetting the family historian in tracing movement and migration of our ancestors.

Any map will give a vision of your ancestor's locality and provide clues for further research. Knowledge of features near to where your ancestor lived such as rivers, roads, railways and market towns can help uncover information about your ancestors' lives. They can provide information about the distance between places enabling you to assess whether it was likely that your ancestors moved or regularly travelled between them. No map will contain details of every feature. There may be an indication of map orientation with the use of a north arrow. On some maps north is at the top. If the map has a scale, you will be able to judge distances but not all maps were drawn to scale.

RESIDENTIAL HOUSES  The larger the scale of the map, the more detail you will find rearding the extent of your ancestor's property. Some houses are down alleys or tucked away in courtyards and these can be easily identified, but sometimes they are not named.  Look at various editions to see how the landscape changed.

CHURCHES  Families went to church for baptisms, marriages and burials at the very least. Maps shows various churches or local nonconformist chapels. In larger towns families often attended the nearest church, rather than the parish church. 

SCHOOLS  Children would usually attend the school which was closest to their home. Many schools were administered by churches so were often near the local church. A map will help identify schools and from there, that will lead you to look for pupils recorded in admission registers and teacher logbooks.

STREET NAMES  Over the years street names may have changed. Using a contemporary map and comparing it with an older map will enable you to identify exactly where your ancestor lived. Many streets may have vanished with redevelopment or slum clearance; other streets were extended and renumbered, so although appearing at a different address in census records, your ancestors may have lived in the same house for years.

AMENITIES   Maps indicate what facilities were available for families to enjoy leisure activities. Public houses, music halls and parks can be indentified but may not be named. 

URBAN REDEVELOPMENT  Maps may be the only record showing the location of an ancestral home. In many central areas of towns and cities, complete redevelopment will have taken place and today there will be no visible remains of a property. Make sure you establish when the map you use was published.

WORK PLACES  Many people lived close to their place of work; some even rented houses owned by their employers. Maps identify the locations and relative sizes of factories, timber yards, railway workshops etc. and provide more information about how a family may have lived.

For family historians there is really only one website that provides the most comprehensive collection of maps - the National Library of Scotland maps website is an absolute treasure trove. The website features thousands of old maps including those produced by the Ordnance Survey from about 1840 up to the modern day. They also have estate maps, plans of towns and cities and a selection of military maps.

The website provides users with a feature that allows you to overlay one map on top of another so you can compare how a places looked during your ancestor’s life with how it appears at a point in history or how it looks today. You can also use a feature on the site known as georeferencing. (Full details are given within the website.)

There are various other websites where different maps can be seen.

It can be difficult finding the correct map in an archive, but try and follow these steps to make life easier when researching.

Ascertain whether a record office or library has a contemporary map compiled around the date of the document in which you have located your ancestors. Visit the record office or search an online map catalogue, noting the call number and edition details so that you can request the correct map for the period.

Some maps will be in sections so you will probably need some assistance from the archive staff to get access to these. This is particularly important when using larger scale Ordnance Survey maps.

It is a good idea to locate the property in local street or Post Office directories of the same time period. Double-check that the property on the map is the same one that you have found in the directory - and also the one shown in your document.

Most record offices and archives allow you to use a camera - but do check first. Take a photo of the map you are looking at, making a note of the date of the map and the map reference and any other notes and information.

There is absolutely no doubt that maps can be fascinating; there is also no doubt that they are so useful in family research - in fact, I would go so far as to say they are essential! A researcher I know purchased a 1969 edition of Bartholomew's Road Atlas of the United Kingdom. It was in book form wth a hard cover and, as well as detailed maps from Shetland to the south coast of England, it also had maps and plans of many cities. This little gold mine cost the princely sum of one pound! It was found in a box of other dusty old books and maps in a second-hand bookshop. So keep your eye open for any such bargains near you; sometimes you can gain more pleasure from looking at a paper map rather than one online.