MAPPING DATA ACROSS BRITAIN
Explore the ancient landscapes of Roman Britain from above with our curated collection, revealing the hidden traces of roads, forts, and settlements etched into the countryside.
Ordnance Survey Maps
The Ordnance Survey’s online version of its well known paper maps. This is unfortunately now a subscription only service. If you would like to use OS maps online for free, the best alternative is Bing, from Microsoft (see below).
Bing Maps
Everyone is familiar with Google Maps, however hardly anyone seems to be aware that Microsoft’s alternative has OS mapping (to 1:25000) in the UK for free! In the drop-down box in the top right corner, Ordnance Survey is the fifth one down and easy to miss. Bing maps appear to no longer be available as an XYZ tile URL, although their aerial /satellite view still is (see aerial photographs)
OpenStreetMap
Open Street Map has always been, and will remain, free and open source. What’s more, the mapping keeps getting better with new features such as field boundaries now being added, at least in some parts of Britain. In addition to the online version, OSM can also be viewed in a GIS such as QGIS by using XYZ tiles. Try these URLs for OSM Cycle http://tile.thunderforest.com/cycle/{z}/{x}/{y}.png and for ordinary OpenStreetMap https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png Unfortunately, OpenStreetMap is only rarely suitable for printing.
Here WeGo
HereWeGo is not the best known, but provides both mapping and recent aerial photo coverage. The layers control to access the aerial imagery is in the bottom right corner of the screen
Google Maps
The best known of all online maps, it unfortunately falls some way short in its representation of landscape features. As with a few others, Google maps can be easily imported into a GIS (eg QGIS) as XYZ tiles – use this URL – https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=r&x={x}&y={y}&z={z} . Google also produce a roads only version, useful as an overlay https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=m&x={x}&y={y}&z={z} and Google Terrain http://mt0.google.com/vt/lyrs=p&hl=en&x={x}&y={y}&z={z} These XYZ layers are not suitable for printing.
Sabre
Sabre is the acronym of the Society for All British & Irish Road Enthusiasts. They have a useful mapping page which gives overlays of various 20th century maps including Bartholomew and OS.
Esri Maps
To use Esri’s mapping, you can utilise the freely available ArcGIS Map Viewer. However, for QGIS users, there are other options using XYZ tiles for example https://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Street_Map/MapServer/tile/{z}/{y}/{x} (Esri Street Map) or https://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Topo_Map/MapServer/tile/{z}/{y}/{x} (Esri topo). Note, these layers are not really suitable for printing.
Magic
The MAGIC website provides authoritative geographic information about the natural environment from across government. The information covers rural, urban, coastal and marine environments across Great Britain. It is presented in an interactive map which can be explored using various mapping tools that are included. Natural England manages the service.
Charles Close Society
The Charles Close Society for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps provides a a page of Online Resources, most of which link through to the National Library of Scotland. The One-inch Old Series from 1806 is also here, courtesy of the national Libraries of Australia and New Zealand. Old maps are located via a modern map interface – once you have located the place you want to view, the range of maps is excellent and easily accessible.
Charles Close Society – One Inch Old Series
The link takes you to a selection chart, which when clicked provides a range of options for that particular map square. Maps are providded by the National Libraries of Australia and New Zealand – no attribution is required for publication. Please note that the Old Series (1805 onwards) only covers England and Wales south of a line roughly from the R. Ribble to the R. Humber.
A Vision Of Britain Through Time
A Vision of Britain through time brings together historical surveys of Britain to create a record of how the country and its localities have changed. It was created by Humphrey Southall and the Great Britain Historical GIS Project (“GIS” stands for “Geographical Information System”). The project is based in the Department of Geography of the University of Portsmouth. Maps are downloadable and appear to all be reproducible under a Creative Commons licence, although for each map set a standard statement giving recognition must be used.
National Library Of Scotland, Historic Mapping
The National Library of Scotland have digitised a whole host of old maps, including town plans, estate maps, and military maps. Whilst the majority are Scottish, they have digitised the majority of Ordnance Survey maps covering Great Britain from before 1960 (see below).
National Library Of Scotland Series Maps
Various series of OS and Bartholomew maps are available, although most important for our purposes are the 6 inch to the mile Ordnance Survey maps, not just of Scotland, but also of England and Wales. Digitisation of the entire 25inch to the mile map series is in progress.
There are two viewing options for the 6 inch, either as a seamless zoomable layer, or as individual sheets.
Old Maps Online
Old Maps Online provides a unparalleled gateway to historical maps in libraries around the world, indexing over 400,000 maps. Since the imagery is drawn from so many sources, the quality is variable and whilst most of it is excellent, some sources (such as the British Library) only supply low resolution images, which is unfortunate.
McMaster University
This fascinating online collection from Canada contains about 400 old maps from Britain (amongst over 3000 in total), and is not part of Old Maps Online. Maps are viewable at high resolution, and include Armstrong’s maps of Durham, Northumberland and Lincolnshire from the late 18th century, which show known Roman roads.
The Historic County Borders Project
The Historic Counties Trust now provides mapping of our Historic County boundaries at either 1:5000 scale or in a simplified format, as either shapefiles (for GIS packages) or kmz (for Google Earth). The data is provided free for both non-commercial and commercial use.
Domesday Shire And Hundreds Of England
This brilliant resource is now available as downloadable shapefiles (for GIS packages) courtesy of Dr. Stuart Brookes, on ADS. Dr. Brooks has mapped all the Shires and Hundreds (or Wapentakes) of England as recorded in the Domesday book.
Environment Agency LiDAR Data (England)
Environment Agency LiDAR data now covers 93% of England at 2m resolution, 88% at 1m. Point cloud data is available for surveys back as far as 2006, however since the inception of the National Lidar Programme in 2016, which aimed to provide 100% coverage by the end of 2021, data is now mainly made available as 5km square tiles in geotiff format, available as either Digital Terrain Model (DTM), which removes vegetation and buildings, or Digital Surface Model (DSM), in resolutions of either 1m or 2m. To download any of the available LiDAR data from DEFRA for a particular area, use the selection map accessed via the button above.
TELLUS Project – South West England Only
LiDAR data from this project is available for all of Cornwall and some of Devon, taken in 2013. Unfortunately, surveying was carried out in summer which has resulted in some of the DTM modelling being poor in wooded areas. You will need to register to download data. Most of this data has arguably been superceded by recent Environment Agency survey. DTM 1m data DSM 1m data
Scottish Remote Sensing Portal
The Scottish Government has conducted four phases of LiDAR survey, and at long last the data is now being made freely available. Data has to be obtained separately for each phase, there is no Composite available. Coverage south of the Central Belt is fairly good, north of it less so
Environment Agency LiDAR Data (Scotland)
A limited amount of lidar data in the Scottish borders is available from the Environment Agency. The link on the button above takes you to the overview page, alternatively you can download 1m resolution data as a 3.55 GB zip file here, or 2m resolution data here
LLE – A Geo-Portal For Wales (LiDAR)
LiDAR coverage in Wales is currently at about 70%, and is now freely available, available as a Historic LiDAR archive, or a LiDAR composite dataset, courtesy of Natural Resources Wales.
Environment Agency LiDAR Imagery (England)
The most recent Composite LiDAR datasets (2020) are now being made available in a variety of pre-processed forms, far better than the coloured tiles which have been around for some time). The most useful for Roman roads studies are the hillshade models, available as a seamless image across the country in monochrome as DTM only at resolutions of 2m and 1m. These can be viewed by an ArcGIS Online Map Viewer, or imported into Google Earth Pro as a KMZ file. There is currently no simple way of importing the pre-processed imagery into QGIS.
1m DTM ArcGIS Viewer 1m DTM Google Earth KMZ 2m DTM ArcGIS Viewer 2m DTM Google Earth KMZ
LidarFinder
This useful tool provides a split screen view of lidar and aerial imagery for England and Wales and provides 25cm, 50cm and 1m in both
DSM and DTM, although at the time of writing (August 2021) the latest data has not been added. It is currently the only pre-processed viewer to provide 50cm and 25cm resolution. Data is supplied by the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales.
House Prices Website – LiDAR Data
A highly unlikely source of processed LiDAR (DSM) data for England and Wales. The Environment Agency data has been used but not updated with latest surveys from the National LiDAR Programme, so coverage is only about 50%, and of course there’s a big hole where Scotland should be. The interface is easy to use, but there are better tools out there now.
LIDAR PROCESSING/VIEWING SOFTWARE
Fugro Viewer
FugroViewerTM is a robust, easy-to-use freeware designed to help users make the most of their geospatial data. We have developed it for use with various types of raster- and vector-based geospatial datasets, including data from photogrammetric, lidar, and IFSAR sources.
Applied Imagery Quick Terrain Reader
This free software can be used to create 3D models from pre-built digital elevation models, such as can be built in RVT (below)
RVT (Relief Visualisation Toolbox)
This very useful free software, developed by the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies (IAPS) at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU), allows the creation of a mosaic from multiple data tiles, which can then be processed in a variety of ways, using processing such as multiple hill shade, sky view factor, and openness. The software does not have a viewer, so you can’t see the results as you go, however there is now a plugin for QGIS.
QGIS
Without question the world’s leading Open source GIS software package – and it’s free! Processing lidar data from the sources above is straightforward, and by using virtual rasters can be done over large areas quickly and easily. QGIS will also process point cloud data . As noted in the previous entry, there is now an RVT plugin for QGIS which allows alternative processing and creates a much crisper image than standard QGIS hillshade.
HISTORIC IMAGERY
National Collection Of Aerial Photography
The National Collection of Aerial Photography, based in Edinburgh, holds over 26 million aerial photos of places across the world. They are all viewable online, and coverage of Britain is reasonably good
Britain From Above
The Aerofilms collection of 96,000 high resolution images, now part of the Historic England Archive, sadly only available online in very low resolution. If you want higher resolution, these have to be purchased.
Cambridge Air Photos
The Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography (CUCAP) is the result of airborne survey campaigns which were started in 1947 by the pioneering JK St Joseph. Since then the collection has grown to almost 500,000 images of obliques and verticals in black and white, colour and infra-red. Virtually the whole of Britain has been covered, with the obliques depicting a wide variety of landscapes and features and the verticals being of survey quality and so can be used in mapping projects. Sadly, only a minority of images are available online, and the collection is currently unstaffed so little is likely to change. Neverthless, a valuable resource.
Google Earth Pro
Not to be confused with standard Google Earth, or Google Maps, Google Earth Pro must be downloaded and installed on your device first.
After which, you can use the historical imagery feature, which enables the user to go back through previous aerial photography sometimes as early as 1945
RECENT IMAGERY
Bing Maps
Everyone is familiar with Google Maps, however Microsoft’s alternative has a different set of aerial photographs which frequently show cropmarks not present on Google’s equivalent.
Esri Maps
As well as maps, Esri also provides aerial photographic coverage
Here WeGo
HereWEGo is not the best known, but provides both mapping and recent aerial photo coverage. The layers control to access the aerial imagery is in the bottom right corner of the screen Google Earth
Unlike Google Earth Pro, standard Google Earth will only show the most recent images
Ordnance Survey Maps
The Ordnance Survey’s mapping website has an aerial layer, accessible in the bottom right corner of the screen. The images are usually very recent.
Zoom Earth
Zoom Earth. Generally the same imagery as Bing.