By: Blonde One
Copyright Ordnance Survey
A few months ago I made a fantastic discovery that has made things at school, especially in Geography lessons and Ten Tors club, even more interesting. The University of Edinburgh, together with Ordnance Survey have produced a wonderful resource called Digimap for Schools. It has been so useful already! The Ten Tors team have used it to: investigate the area they will be walking in, plot a route and measure the distance, create a route card, print their route.
The feature that I’m most fascinated by is the ability to see maps from different ages.
Here’s the one from the 1890s.
Copyright Ordnance Survey
And the 1950s.
Copyright Ordnance Survey
They’re so interesting that they keep distracting me from other jobs!
You might also like to look at the huge amount of digitised historical mapping provided by the National LIbrary of Scotland at http://maps.nls.uk/ it covers the whole of the UK, not just Scotland.
It’s fascinating seeing how the roads that are used by fast traffic today originated in the mud-bound, pot-holey cart tracks of long ago, and still mostly follow the same routes across the landscape.