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Chapter 8
TOPOGRAPHICAL MAPS & SURVEYS
Before looking at the development of surveying on a national scale it may be of interest to go back over the centuries to consider some of the topographical (i.e. large-scale) maps which were the forerunners of those produced today. Generally speaking, the earlier maps mentioned in this chapter are known only from unique or very rare copies and they are, therefore, outside the range of our collectors' maps, but it is felt that they represent another aspect of map history which most collectors will find worthy of note.
It is appropriate to consider first events in Italy, where more than anywhere else in Europe, a tradition of map making had taken root, especially in the northern cities. Portulan charts, of which we have already written, were in use by Italian sea men throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and probably earlier; the first translations of the Ptolemy manuscripts into Latin were made about the year 1406 in Florence and, above all, the intellectual and artistic atmosphere of the time provided the skills needed for drawing what may be best described as picture maps. For the most part those that survive depict the chief cities of Northern Italy - Venice, Padua, Verona, Mantua - and the districts around them, often distinguishing between defended and undefended positions, no doubt intended for use in the wars between Venice and Milan.
It seems likely that the Italian enthusiasm for map drawing in this manner influenced ideas in neighbouring states. In Germany, for example, in 1492 Ehrhard Etzlaub, noted for his later 'Rome Way' road map, produced large-scale maps of the surroundings of Nuremberg and other German cities. In the following year the Nuremberg Chronicle with its very large number of woodcut illustrations - both bird's eye views and prospects - of European towns was published. The Kingdom of Wurttemberg was mapped in some detail round the year 1500 and Saxony soon afterwards, but Philipp Apian's map of Bavaria on 40 sheets was the first really large-scale map of a wide area: the original is lost but a reproduction on 24 sheets was published in 1568. A later picture map of the Black Forest published in 1578 (reissued in 1603) by Johann Georg Tibianus (1541-1611) is a particularly pleasing example of its kind, so clear and self-explanatory that the use of a key to symbols is hardly necessary.
Elsewhere we have written of large-scale maps of Switzerland by Aegidius Tschudi, Jos Murer and Thomas Schoepf, of Austria and Hungary by Wolfgang Lazius, of the Netherlands by Jacobus van Deventer, of Denmark by Mark Jorden and of Scandinavia by Olaus Magnus.
In the rather less sophisticated atmosphere of England, there seems to have been no tradition of map drawing such as had existed in Central Europe. Although surveys of estate and monastic lands were made in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries very few were accompanied by 'maps' in any useful sense and only a few dated prior to the year 1500 are known. Soon after that year, however, Continental influences awakened interest in the technicalities of map making. A book by Gemma Frisius, A Method of Delineating Places, published in Louvain in 1533 was followed in England by the work of William Cunningham, The Cosmographicall Classe, in 1559 and by Leonard Digges, Pantomeiria, in 1571 on the subject of surveying, land measurement, the use of theodolites and the principles of triangulation. About the same time, subsequent to the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1540s, an increasing need arose for estate mapping on a wide scale and there were other projects such as maps of the coastline and fortresses made for Henry VIII and later for Lord Burghlev in the face of threats of Spanish invasion. These, and no doubt many others of which we have no knowledge, must have been used by Laurence Nowell in compiling his 19 sheet map of England and Wales in 1563 and by Christopher Saxton in his survey for the Atlas of England and Wales published in 1579.
These English maps cannot really be called large-scale and indeed, in the years ahead, perhaps only the inset town plans on maps by John Speed and others merit that description: they, of course, covered only very small areas. Later in the century between the years 1675 and 1685 the publication of the strip road maps in Ogilby's Britannia, the work of John Adams who contemplated a survey by triangulation of England and Wales, and the general survey of Ireland by William Petty all pointed the way to larger-scale mapping, but inspiration for greater projects was lacking and these advances were overshadowed by events in France.
In Chapter 14 we describe briefly the fundamental work in France of the Cassini family and Jean Picard, but the turbulent years of the 18th century were not conducive in any sense to international co-operation, certainly not in the field of cartography, and most nations were slow to adopt the new surveying techniques developed by the French. The Russians were an exception: as early as 1720 Tsar Peter the Great embraced French ideas wholeheartedly (as we have described in Chapter 19), setting up an Academy of Sciences and beginning, with the help of French cartographers Joseph Nicolas and Louis Delisle, the enormous task of mapping Russia. Even with every encouragement, a real survey by triangulation was not started until 1816 and took many years to complete. This time scale was not unusual and the following dates give some idea of the long periods involved before complete sets of maps were published: Denmark 1762-1834, Sweden 1758-1857, Norway 1773-c1850, the Austro-Hungarian Empire c. 1762-1860 and Switzerland 1832-1864.
In the British Isles map makers were just as complaisant and only the lack of accurate maps to meet military requirements in Scotland following the 1745 Jacobite rising stimulated official action. In the following years (1747-1755) practically the whole of Scotland was mapped on a scale of 1000 yards to one inch, but the maps were never printed. The actual survey was carried out at the instigation of Colonel David Watson by William Roy, later to become Deputy Quartermaster General and Surveyor of Coastal Defence. As a result of his practical experience in Scotland Roy became a determined advocate of mapping the rest of the British Isles in the same manner, but for various political and military reasons his advocacy met with no success until 1783. In that year the French Government suggested that the Observatories of Paris and Greenwich should he linked by Cassini's method of triangulation, the French claiming that the latitude of Greenwich, as previously calculated, was incorrect.
The challenge was too great to be ignored and Roy was charged with the work on this side of the Channel, his first task being to measure a base-line on Hounslow Heath, from which the triangulation was to be extended to Greenwich and Dover for the purpose of linking up with the French. This was completed in 1784, but Roy was far more interested in regarding the Hounslow Heath base as the start of a general survey of the British Isles, and so it was to prove. Unfortunately, Roy died in 1790 but detailed work was continued under the direction of the Duke of Richmond, the Master General of Ordnance who, in 1791, formally set up a Survey Office in the Tower of London, then the Headquarters of the Board of Ordnance, to administer the whole task of surveying Britain. At that time and in the following years under threat of Napoleonic invasion accurate mapping was regarded as a military requirement -hence the assignment of the task to the Board of Ordnance and our use of the term today.
The first objective was to produce a map on a scale of one inch to one mile, the scale which had been used for so many of the county maps in the previous thirty or forty years. Work on the Trigonometrical Survey, as it was originally called, started in Kent and Essex using the data prepared by General William Roy, and by 1801 a map of Kent on four sheets was ready for publication: this was printed by William Faden.
The early surveying carried out by officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers under the command of Major (later General) William Mudge (1762-1820) and his successor Major (General) Thomas Colby (c.1784-1852) was never an easy or speedy process: the requirements of the British armies fighting Napoleon in Europe claimed priority until 1815 and frequently opposition from big landowners made life very difficult for the surveyors. No doubt these reasons and the time required to train staff to a sufficiently high standard resulted in indifferent work, and there were many inaccuracies in the earliest maps produced up to about 1820-30. These difficulties were emphasized by the high-quality maps which were being published at private expense in direct competition with the national survey.
As the accuracy and presentation of Ordnance maps improved, however, output from private sources declined and the official maps became the accepted standard. Their overall accuracy was quite remarkable and base lines 350 miles apart were found to differ by only 5 inches! Of course, at this stage the survey was no means complete and in 1825 at short notice, most of the Army teams involved in field work were moved to Ireland to undertake a complete new survey there for fiscal purposes to replace the old "townland" system on which Irish taxation had long been based. For this purpose maps were required in great detail and they were drawn therefore to a scale of six inches to one mile: the resulting maps were so successful that, in 1840, it was decided to use that scale for the rest of the survey of England, Wales and Scotland and, in spite of much controversy, to extend it still further to 25 inches to one mile. Soon afterwards, in 1853 it was agreed internationally that the overall scale of 25 inches to one mile (and its metric equivalent) was necessary for a really adequate survey, and that remains the standard today.
To meet the growing demand for maps the Ordnance Office developed new methods of printing and, from about 1853 onwards, maps in the one inch series appeared with the words 'Printed from an Electrotype' in the bottom margin. This was a method of duplicating the original engraved copper plates to enable printers to produce more copies without any significant loss of quality, besides reducing the price from around three shillings (15 p) per quarter sheet in 1831 to about sixpence (slightly less than 3p) in 1862.
The complete First Edition (or Old Series as it has become known) of one inch to one mile maps was finished by 1873: the New Series on the six and 25 inch scales, after much revision and resurveying, was finally completed in 1893. Printing was only in black and white but individual examples were sold hand-coloured, often in bound volumes, by many of the official agents. Then, late in the 1890s, printed partially coloured copies became available, followed in 1912 by full colour printing.
The period of seventy years to complete the one inch survey seems a long time, and one cannot but reflect on the extraordinary achievement of Christopher Saxton in completing his 'perambulations', surveying the length and breadth of England and Wales in the years 1573-1579.
By contrast with the flamboyance of the engravings made for Saxton, the first Ordnance maps, although still engraved on copper plates, were plain, even austere ; they bore no list of symbols, but the delineation of geographical features was beautifully clear. The methods of shading and hachuring to show the heights of hills was not considered satisfactory and, starting in 1843, they were eventually replaced by the use of contour lines as we know them. Basically, apart from constant revision and refinement, the maps remain the same today and few countries anywhere can boast of so complete and meticulous a system of mapping.
Specialist Reference
CLOSE, Col. Sir CHARLES, The Early Years of the Ordnance Survey. Institution of Royal Engineers 1926; New Edition with Introduction by J. B. Harley, Whitstable 1969, Latimer Trend & Co. Ltd.