Maps for the Local Historian: A Guide to the British Sources

National Council of Social Service for the Standing Conference for Local History. Very Good. 1972. Illustrated Card Cover. 8vo 0719908345 Illustrated card cover.Maps. 8 Plates. 86 pages clean and tight. "Preface. Maps and plans are one of the most ubiquitous of all British documents in the post-medieval period. The British Museum Catalogue of Printed Maps, Charts and Plans (1967) runs to fifteen large volumes, but lists only a tiny fragment of the national riches of printed-leave alone manuscript-maps and plans. Few libraries are without a map collection and the cartographic content of local record offices is often as valuable as that of better-known national institutions. Maps are also one of the most varied of the major classes of historical evidence. Cartography has had an application to so many branches of human activity-both practical and intellectual-that a classification of maps is likely to have almost as many sub-divisions as a classification of books. Insofar as they vary in purpose, in date, in physical form, in detail and in accuracy, their application in the reconstruction of the past is correspondingly wide. There is an obvious need for a simple guide to assist all those who use `old maps' in the course of their work. The relevance of map evidence to historical studies is of course influenced as much by the specialist nature of these studies as by the availability and characteristics of the cartographic sources. Maps may range from being the one and only mode of expression of an historical fact to a situation where they merely supplement more important types of evidence. In the present Guide, however, such distinctions are ignored, and the basic aim is to provide a short commentary around the substantial, yet scattered, reading on the history of British maps and to single out books and articles which will assist in either the location or in the interpretation of particular groups of maps and plans. Information about published bibliographies and lists of maps and plans is concentrated at the beginning of each chapter and is followed by an account of such secondary literature as contains important background information. `Maps', one historian has remarked, `are a dangerous type of evidence' and, as well as being familiar with their diversity, we need to sustain a critical attitude on the question of reliability. This is likely to be determined by factors related not only to the original purpose of the map, but also to the methods by which cartographers worked. Early maps were the creation in varying degrees of tradesmen as well as craftsmen, and of artists as much as scientific surveyors. The local historian needs a working acquaintance with the detailed studies of historians of cartography-although at first sight they may seem to be forbiddingly biographical, technical, bibliographical or even antiquarian-and at the same time to adopt the ways of testing maps (as against other types of topographical evidence) developed by other scholars. This is the justification for the `bibliographical' approach of the present publication. This is in any case of an interim nature. The material it contains appeared as a series of articles in The Local Historian between 1967 and 1969 and it is reprinted from the standing type with only minor corrections. In area the treatment is confined to Great Britain, and six major categories of maps-town plans, estate plans, enclosure and tithe award plans, maps of communications, marine charts and county maps-are traced from their origins to approximately the mid-nineteenth century. The maps of the Ordnance Survey, the subject of a separate study uniform with this booklet,', are excluded. When the original articles were commissioned it was intended to add new sections before publication in booklet form, but, in practice, to have covered other specialist maps and plans in the same detail-such as the military plans which are mentioned en passant-would have greatly extended its scope. A bibliographical postscript has, however, been added to list items published since the articles were written. J B HARLEY Department of Geography University of Exeter." .