Early motorways - 1960

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jon81
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Early motorways - 1960

Post by jon81 »

Hi, have made some scans of a 1960 Bartholomew atlas, particularly of early motorways, such as the M10, M45, M50 and the original M62. The atlas also highlights "primary trunk roads" (A1-A9), but a later edition (1972) marks highlighted routes as dual carriageways. Interestingly, the A6 is not highlighted through Preston, just a misprint? Also, it has several dotted motorway routes including the M2, M4, M5, M6 and the A1(M).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/164289893@N06/
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Steven
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Re: Early motorways - 1960

Post by Steven »

jon81 wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 18:08 Hi, have made some scans of a 1960 Bartholomew atlas, particularly of early motorways, such as the M10, M45, M50 and the original M62. The atlas also highlights "primary trunk roads" (A1-A9), but a later edition (1972) marks highlighted routes as dual carriageways. Interestingly, the A6 is not highlighted through Preston, just a misprint? Also, it has several dotted motorway routes including the M2, M4, M5, M6 and the A1(M).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/164289893@N06/
It's interesting to compare and contrast against the similar aged OS maps available on SABRE Maps such as Quarter Inch, Ten Mile/Route Planning and One Inch
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SABRE Maps, the Discover section of the SABRE website, is a major project undertaken by SABRE to display out-of-copyright road mapping of Great Britain and Ireland, mostly concentrating on Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey Ireland and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland mapping. It is supported (though not financially) by external organisations such as the British Library, the National Library of Scotland and Cambridge University Library; as well as by the private

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B1040
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Re: Early motorways - 1960

Post by B1040 »

There were few (but not no) dual carriageways in 1960 and few mapmakers other than the OS on scales greater than 1" to the mile showed them.
Bartholomew highlighted A1-9 probably because of a perception they were the most important roads.
My grandparents had this edition of the atlas. It was lost way back.
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Chris Bertram
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Re: Early motorways - 1960

Post by Chris Bertram »

Barts were always a bit of a law unto themselves where their mapping was concerned. They tended initially to indicate the quality of a road rather than its classification, such that high quality B roads looked like A roads and vice versa. And they didn't always get the numbers right, or show them consistently. Against that, the maps looked lovely, the topographical information being superbly depicted. Later on, they decided to show roads by classification like the others. But by then they'd lost the battle to be taken seriously as route planning tools, and you won't find them on sale today.
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Gav
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Re: Early motorways - 1960

Post by Gav »

Barts was private and could not compete with the ordnance survey that had financial backing of the government. they made good maps in their time and had a few firsts, and some claims to fame.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collins_Bartholomew

anyways they are still out there making maps and in rude health. The Collins road atlases have links back to Bartholomew

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/busine ... lomew.html
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Steven
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Re: Early motorways - 1960

Post by Steven »

Chris Bertram wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 22:02 And they didn't always get the numbers right, or show them consistently.
Including the famous examples from 1922 where they used the draft road list to get a jump on everyone else only to get completely caught out in places.
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Robert Kilcoyne
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Re: Early motorways - 1960

Post by Robert Kilcoyne »

Gav wrote: Fri Jul 12, 2019 08:42 Barts was private and could not compete with the ordnance survey that had financial backing of the government. they made good maps in their time and had a few firsts, and some claims to fame.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collins_Bartholomew

anyways they are still out there making maps and in rude health. The Collins road atlases have links back to Bartholomew

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/busine ... lomew.html
As noted above, Barts changed the mapping later to show relevant dual carriageway sections on all A roads, while showing the single carriageway sections on the A1-A9 routes as a simple red line. The cartography from the 1960's was used, with a few changes (motorways were coloured blue and newer more modern typefaces used for the larger cities and towns) until around 1985. I can remember that Barts introduced completely new mapping in 1986 with the Motorists Road Atlas of Britain, which showed B roads in green.

The road atlases which Barts published for Hamlyn in the 1970's and early 1980's were excellent, as they included detailed motorway strip maps, as did the Motorway Atlas of Britain, which it published in association with Autocar.
Last edited by Robert Kilcoyne on Fri Jul 12, 2019 19:01, edited 2 times in total.
tommym8
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Re: Early motorways - 1960

Post by tommym8 »

An interesting map of Anniesland in1980 on that stream. The proposed roundabout with flyover was never built and the cinema shown at the corned of Gt Western Rd/Knightscliffe Ave closed in the late 30's!!
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