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Ordnance Survey

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The roots of the United Kingdom Ordnance Survey (OS) go back to 1747, when King George II of England commissioned a military survey of the Scottish highlands following the Jacobite revolt of 1745. William Roy was the engineer responsible for this pioneering work. It was not until 1790 that the Board of Ordnance (the predecessor of the Ministry of Defence) began a national military survey starting with the south coast of England in anticipation of a French invasion.

By 1791, the Board had purchased the new Ramsden theodolite, and work commenced on mapping southern Britain using a baseline that Roy himself had previously measured. In 1801 the first one-inch map was published: it was of Kent, with a second of Essex following shortly after.

During the next twenty years about a third of England and Wales was mapped at the one-inch scale. It was gruelling work: Major Thomas Colby, later the longest serving Director General of the Ordnance Survey, walked 586 miles in 22 days on a reconnaissance in 1819.

In 1824, Colby and most of his staff moved to Ireland, to work on a six inch to the mile valuation survey. Colby was not only involved in the design of specialist measuring equipment. He also established a systematic collection of place names, and reorganised the map-making process to produce clear, accurate plans. He believed in leading from the front, travelling with his men, helping to build camps, and as each survey session drew to a close arranging mountain-top parties with enormous plum puddings.

After the first Irish maps began to come out in the mid-1830s, the Tithe Commutation Act led to calls for similar six-inch surveys in England and Wales. After official prevarication, the development of the railways added to pressure that resulted in the 1841 Ordnance Survey Act. This granted a right to enter property for the purpose of the survey.

Following a fire at its headquarters in the Tower of London, the OS was in disarray for several years with arguments about which scales to use. Major-General Sir Henry James was now Director General, and he saw how photography could be used to make maps of various scales cheaply and easily. The twenty five inch to the mile survey was complete by 1895.

During the First World War the OS was more involved in preparing maps overseas, but after the war Colonel Charles Close, the current Director General, developed a marketing strategy, using covers designed by Ellis Martin to increase sales in the leisure market. In 1920 O. G. S. Crawford was appointed Archeology Officer and played a prominent role in developing the use of aerial photography to deepen understanding of archaeology.

The Davidson Committee was established in 1935 to review the Ordnance Survey's future. The new Director General, Major-General Malcolm MacLeod, started the retriangulation of Great Britain, an immense task which involved erecting concrete triangulation pillars on prominent hilltops throughout Britain.

The Davidson Committee's final report set the OS on course for the twentieth century. The National Grid reference system was launched, with the metre as its measurement. An experimental new 1:25,000 scale map was introduced. The one-inch maps remained for almost forty years before being superseded by the 1:50,000 scale series, as proposed by William Roy more than two centuries earlier.

In 1995 the Ordnance Survey digitised the last of about 230,000 maps, making Britain the first country in the world to complete a programme of large-scale electronic mapping.

The OS is now a civilian organisation.

Ordnance Survey maps are available in most bookshops, generally in two scales:

  • 1:50,000
    • Landranger - These are designed as road maps. They have pink covers and 204 of them cover the whole of the UK.
  • 1:25,000
    • Explorer - Designed for walkers and cyclists. There are 351 of these maps at the time of writing, but the number is increasing. They have orange covers.
    • Explorer OL - Also for walkers & cyclists. These 33 maps specifically cover tourist destinations. Identified by their yellow covers and often double-sided, they predate the explorer maps. Previously known as Outdoor Leisure maps.
    • Pathfinder - Pathfinders were the predecessors to the Explorer and Explorer OL maps. These maps were smaller than the new ones and generally had no overlap between adjacent sheets, meaning that even a short walk may require three or four different maps and a long one may range over even more. For this reason they have recently been gradually phased out.

Also produced are the mapping index (free), showing which parts of the country are covered by which maps, and Travel maps.

The original maps were made by building short (approx four foot high), square, concrete pillars on top of various high points and working out the exact position of these by triangulation. The details in between were then filled in with less precise methods. Modern Ordnance Survey maps are based on aerial photographs, but many of the pillars, or trig points remain.

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