Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. Its name indicates its original military purpose, which was to map the Scottish Highlands in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745 in order to locate dissenters. Later the threat of invasion by Napoleonic France gave rise to a more nationwide need for maps. The Principal Triangulation of Great Britain was undertaken between 1783–1853 by the Board of Ordnance, which led to the creation of the Ordnance Survey itself. The first one-inch-to-the-mile map was published in 1801. Later, a demand for larger scale maps led to the six-inches-per-mile survey, started in the 1840s. Originally operating from the (literally) Drawing Room of the Tower of London, the Ordnance Survey moved to Southampton on 12 November 1841, a fortnight after a fire had destroyed its headquarters in the Tower. Notable 19th century Directors include William Mudge (1798-1820), Thomas Frederick Colby (1820-1847) and Sir Henry James (1854-1875). We include here maps by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland which succeeded the Irish operations of the British Ordnance Survey after independence in 1922; it was headquarted at Mountjoy House in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, which had been the headquarters of the British Ordnance Survey in Ireland

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Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey Sheet 303 Tunbridge Wells High Weald Rother East Sussex 1881 map

Ordnance Survey Sheet 306 Dover. Shakespeare Beach Hougham Samphire Hoe 1878 map

Ordnance Survey Sheet 321 "Denge Ness". Dungeness Lydd Kent 1880 old map

Isle of Man Lancashire Ribble Blackpool Preston. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1922 old map

Bournemouth & Weymouth sheet 140. Dorset Swanage. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1939 old map

War Revision Sheet 9 CARLISLE. Cumbria. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1940 old vintage map

War Office Sheet 108 DENBIGH. Wales Rhyl Mold Flint Dee ORDNANCE SURVEY 1949 map

War Revision 1940 Sheet 62 BURTON & WALSALL. Lichfield. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1940 map

War Office Sheet 130 KIDDERMINSTER Wolverhampton Dudley ORDNANCE SURVEY 1949 map

War Revision Sheet 105 OXFORD & HENLEY-on-THAMES Valley ORDNANCE SURVEY 1941 map

War Revision Sheet 20 KIRKBY LONSDALE & HAWES. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1940 old map

Sheet 18 WASDALE. Cumbria Wastwater Millom Sellafield. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1932 map

War Office Sheet 128 MONTGOMERY & LLANDRINDOD WELLS. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1949 map

Scottish Borders Berwickshire Peebles Roxburgh Selkirk. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1922 map

Shropshire Staffordshire Leics Notts Flintshire Derbys. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1922 map

Northern Norfolk Southern Lincolnshire Rutland. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1922 old map

Pembrokeshire Carmarthenshire Cardiganshire Breconshire ORDNANCE SURVEY 1922 map

Monmouthshire Gloucestershire Oxfordshire Cotswolds. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1922 map

Northern Devonshire Exmoor Bideford Bay Bude Bay. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1922 old map

Somerset Wiltshire Berkshire Hampshire Salisbury Plain. ORDNANCE SURVEY 1922 map

MS&LR/Great Central Railway planning map Chesterfield ORDNANCE SURVEY #82SW 1882

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