Category:Road Mapping

---Note: very much a work in progess---

A history of road mapping

From strip maps of coaching routes to Sat Nav and Internet mapping, this is a history of how road maps have developed.

Ogilby's strip maps

The first road maps to have been created in Britain are generally accepted to be those drawn by John Ogilby in the 1670s. They are certainly the first road maps to cover large areas of England and Wales.

The work of collating the data was started in 1669, and published in 1675 as Britannia, Volume the first. This was before the network of turnpike roads had really been started, and so depicts the post routes, and other important roads as they were in the second half of the seventeenth century.

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Brands of mapping

A look at the different brands of mapping available, their distinctive features and cartographical style.

• AA Mapping - Route level mapping
• A-Z Mapping - Street level mapping
• Bartholomew's Mapping - Half Inch / 1:100,000 range of maps.
• Collins Mapping - Route level mapping
• Google Mapping - Digital based mapping with enhanced features
• OS Mapping - National Mapping Agency - Various scales from street level to national route level
• OSNI Mapping - National Mapping Agency - Various scales from street level to national route level
• OSI Mapping - National Mapping Agency - Various scales from street level to national route level
• Michelin Mapping - Route level mapping
• Philips Street Atlases - Street level mapping
• Teleatlas Mapping - Digital based mapping used for mobile and internet based mapping
• Navteq Mapping - Digital based mapping used for mobile and internet based mapping
• Book of the Road Mapping - Route level mapping

(need to add more brands)

Digital mapping

The internet has opened up the availability of mapping, with endless scrolling maps, old scanned maps and data overlays, the following comprise of several sites that give digital access to various different maps

• SABRE Maps - Lots of old maps from the 1920s to 1960.
• New Popular Edition Maps - A collection of scanned maps from the 1940/1950's (also on SABRE Maps)
• OS Openspace Mapping - Scrollable OS maps of the entire country (maps from circa 2007)
• OS Get-a-map - Less user friendly OS mapping (up to date mapping)
• British Geological Survey - Borehole mapping - useful for checking dates of road construction and unbuilt roads (turn borehole records on)

Atlas dating project

To help date road maps and atlases, we are working on a list of changes to the road network that would help date them.

This is split by decade: 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s