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would normally be able to tell you as I have a sizeable collection of them and one day aim to have the full set of 62, but they're not with me at the moment! From what I recall though I don't think they have contour lines on them, just the shading.
I've had a look at two or three in a local charity bookshop, and they ***do*** have thin brown contour-lines on them between the various colour-layers, but I've never seen any of them labelled on any of the sheets I looked at! If anyone who has the National Map Series spots a contour-line height label can they scan an extract of it please?
I can now offer a definitive update on this subject!
Bartholomew Half-Inch England & Wales:-
Contour-line labels written in the traditional manner along the lines are on the following sheets:-
Sheet 3 North Devon
Sheet 5 Hampshire & New Forest
Sheet 6 Sussex
Sheet 7 North Somerset
Sheet 12 South Wales
Sheet 22 West Wales
Sheet 23 Shropshire
Sheet 24 Vale Of Trent
Sheet 25 Fenland
Sheet 28 Merseyside
Sheet 31 North Lancashire
Sheet 32 West Riding
Sheet 35 Teesdale
Sheet 36 North Yorkshire Moors
Sheet 38 Solway Firth
Sheet 41 Tweeddale
Sheet 42 Northumberland
The remainder of the E & W have patchy contour-line annotation, where a contour-line height is indicated, it is by horizontally-written figures across the contour line, usually adjacent to a nearby road.
The contour-lines are as follows, feet above sea-level:-
The following sheets have several lowland 25' contour-lines:-
Sheet 31 North Lancashire, Sheet 32 East Riding (25' contours not labelled)
50' contour-lines are not present on the Isle of Man and the Lake District areas, roughly in the area between the Morecambe Bay coastline and the A595/A596 Maryport - Carlisle road.
Scottish Half-Inch sheets have contours labelled along the lines but only at multiples of 500 feet starting from the 500' contour, altho' Sheet 60 has "250, 500 & 750" annotated in one place along the lines near the bottom R.H. corner - these contours do not appear to be labelled anywhere else in Scotland.
The sheets have all been revised by redrawing the roads, villages, etc., from the basic plates/maps produced in the late 1890s/early 1900s, and as far as I can tell, there are no differences in how the contours are drawn and labelled in all the half-inch sheet revisions right up until 1973/1974 when the final half-inch sheets were printed, so my post applies to all the revisions.
The darker emerald green tint indicating land "Below Sea Level" was added to Sheet 20, Sheet 21, Sheet 25, Sheet 26 & Sheet 30 during the early-to-mid 1960s, but these additions didn't alter any other contour-lines.
I have never found any labels along any of the zero-feet contours bounding the "below sea level" areas.
