Posted by Nick Burch on Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:05:02 +0000
We are currently experimenting with a couple of different types of old Scottish maps, with varying levels of sucess.
The easiest maps to work with are the 7th edition maps, which were created using the National Grid. These can be tiled up, and then used on the site in just the same way as the existing New Popular Edition maps of England and Wales. There are only two snags: Not all of the Scottish 7th edition maps are out of copyright, and we don't have all of the ones that are. If anyone does have any of them, we'd love to hear from them.
Next up, we have the updated Popular Edition maps from the 1940s, which had the National Grid printed over them. These were produced both for the War Office, and for general sale to the public (though we don't think very large numbers of them were). As these maps weren't originally produced with the National Grid, when added it's not completely straight. This means it's more work to tile them, but not impossible.
We have done a trial run with an updated Popular Edition map, and the result (covering Inverness) can be seen here. We are currently getting several of these maps scanned in, so we hope to be able to show maps for some of Scotland in the next few weeks. We don't have these maps for all of Scotland though, so again we'd love to hear from anyone who does.
Finally, a very kind person has offered us all of the Popular Edition maps (from the 1920s) for Scotland, just as soon as he's had them scanned in. Unfortunately, the Popular Edition wasn't produced against the National Grid, so the process of converting the scans into suitable tiles looks like being quite a complex one. So, it may be some time until we can put these maps online.
On a related note, we're still very keen to hear from anyone who has out of copyright 1 inch to the mile maps of Northern Ireland. Do please get in touch if you have some.