Maps as a Recordkeeping Technology

Abstract

This paper considers the impact of cartographic technologies on recordkeeping, with a focus on British government records of land ownership between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the nineteenth century, advances in mapmaking techniques, particularly in relation to surveying and reproduction, led to more maps being available that could be reused or adapted for recordkeeping purposes. The fully effective use of maps as records emerged not only because of such developments in cartographic techniques but also because record creators developed the mindset to embrace the administrative potential of maps and incorporate them into recordkeeping systems.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Rose Mitchell, Alex Green, Caroline Williams, an anonymous reviewer and attendees of the first day of the I-CHORA5 conference (1 July 2010) for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

The discussion is limited to central government records. Further research is needed to establish how far the use of maps in local government and private recordkeeping developed differently.

Examples cited elsewhere in this paper include: Kain and Baigent, The cadastral map in the service of the state; Barber ‘England II.’

Robinson et al., Elements of Cartography, 9–10; McDermott, ‘What is a map?’, 88.

Robinson et al., 11; Board, ‘Cartographic Communication,’ 44–7; Harley, ‘The map and the development of the history of cartography,’ 1.

Delano-Smith and Kain, English maps, 6.

Kain and Baigent, 1 and passim; Delano-Smith and Kain, 112; Wallis and Robinson, Cartographical innovations, 95–6.

References to ‘the state's interaction with its citizens and the physical environment’ and ‘the rights and duties of the crown’ in The National Archives' acquisition policies reflect this. The National Archives, Acquisition and disposition strategy, paragraph 6.1. Maps have also been used for recording other aspects of government business, such as relationships with other countries.

Robinson et al., 9; Kain and Baigent, 332–3; Thrower, Maps and civilization, 1.

Delano-Smith and Kain, 114, 118; Kain and Baigent, 5, 236–7, 257. For instance, almost all property deeds dating from before the nineteenth century were purely textual (see: Alcock, Old title deeds, 68; Kain and Baigent 254–5), even although cartographic technologies were sufficiently advanced for maps or plans to have been included much earlier.

Kain, Chapman and Oliver, The enclosure maps of England and Wales, 39; Kain and Baigent, 5–7. Landowners would, however, often commission maps for the prestige this conferred rather than for practical reasons. Delano-Smith and Kain, 121–3; Kain and Baigent, 341.

Traditional diplomatic structures and formulae consist of words and have no place for maps and other non-text materials; see: Duranti Diplomatics, 141–50; Alcock, 56. Even in recent decades, historical researchers, while acknowledging that maps can be information-rich, have tended to overlook them as sources of evidence. Hindle, Maps for historians, vii.

The National Archives holds about 350 maps made before 1600, of which the majority date from the later sixteenth century. Rose Mitchell, personal communication.

Registers of land tax redemption certificates (The National Archives record series IR 24) provide an example of the growth of maps in government records during the nineteenth century: the proportion of entries including a map or plan increases from perhaps 2% in 1840 to about 25% in 1860, 40% in 1880 and nearly 100% in 1900.

Mitchell, ‘Maps in sixteenth century English law courts,’ 213.

Kain and Baigent, 236, 257, 343. Beech, ‘Cartography and the state,’ 190.

The National Archives, Maps for research, section 1. For discussion of the state's role in mapmaking before the nineteenth century, see: Barber, 58–9, 79–82, 84; Delano-Smith and Kain, 55–7, 194–200, 216–7; Harvey, Maps in Tudor England.

Seymour, A history of the Ordnance Survey, chapters 1, 6; Owen and Pilbeam, Ordnance Survey, 1, 12–3, 21–3; Oliver, Ordnance Survey maps, 15–6. The traditional ‘founding’ date of Ordnance Survey, 21 June 1791, masks a more complex reality.

Oliver, 16–7; Owen and Pilbeam, 46–54; Seymour, 114–5, 124–6.

The National Archives, Ordnance Survey records, section 7; The National Archives, Admiralty charts, section 3; Jewitt, Maps for Empire, xii-xiv, xix.

Franklin, The real world of technology, 18–20.

This outline results from the comparison of Robinson et al., 18, 38; Andrews, Maps in those days, chapters 4, 6, 14; Shepherd and Yeo, Managing records, 5–7.

The most obvious examples of modern not-to-scale maps are diagrammatic maps of public transport networks, most famously the London Underground map.

Harvey, 8, 80–5; Skelton, Maps, 15.

Andrews, chapter 6; Delano-Smith and Kain, 58–9; Owen and Pilbeam, 22, 55. Not until well into the twentieth century were aerial surveying techniques widely used to supplement more traditional methods. Thrower, 162–3; Owen and Pilbeam, 87, 106–7, 140–1.

Hindle, 29; Thrower, 66. An anonymous reviewer points out that the main factor influencing the choice between printing or manuscript was whether few or many copies were required; see also note 54, below.

Robinson et al., 30–3; Andrews, 337–9; Wallis and Robinson, section 7.

Thrower, 59; Skelton, 12–3, 16; Delano-Smith and Kain, 52–3. How up-to-date a published map was would, of course, affect its reliability when used as part of a record.

The term ‘layering’ in this sense is borrowed from a technical term used in digital mapping. In geographical information systems (GIS), each ‘slice or stratum of the geographic reality’ is recorded separately in the underlying data and the resulting ‘layers’ are combined in the map as viewed on screen. Wade and Sommer, A-Z GIS, 121–2.

The National Archives MPC 1/212 (extracted from DL 42/119 f 378).

The various kinds of layering used on paper maps seem not to have been studied as a unified phenomenon and further research is needed in this area. The War Office map library (record series WO 78) is particularly rich in examples.

Making a collage usually involves trimming away some of the margins of the printed sheets, which commonly contain dates, mapmakers' names and other useful metadata; record creators can therefore remove information from maps as well as adding it.

Compare, for instance, the discussion in Flynn, ‘The records continuum model in context’, 80–3, with the continuum-type models of mapmaking and use in Robinson et al., 17–9.

Civilian departments using significant amounts of layering before 1900 include the Office of Works (series WORK 30 and WORK 32 include many examples) and the Land Tax Redemption Office; by the end of the nineteenth century almost all entries in the latter's registers of land tax redemption certificates (series IR 24) include either an annotated cutting or a tracing of part of an Ordnance Survey map.

By 1896, Ordnance Survey had mapped the whole of Great Britain, save a few areas of very low population, at the scale of 1:2,500. Oliver, 35.

This is consistent with Margaret Cross Norton's recognition that ‘cheap printed forms’ and similar technological advances that make creating records easier are a factor in the proliferation of records. Norton, ‘Making and control of administrative records,’ 132. An anonymous reviewer suggests, probably correctly, that overprinting of maps became more common during the twentieth century for similar reasons of effectiveness and cheapness.

For a variety of examples, see the MapTube website: http://www.maptube.org/. For an alternative perspective on the continuity between paper and digital maps, see Fisher, ‘Is GIS hidebound?’, 5–7.

See: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/opendata/. For experimental ‘spatial’ finding aids being developed by The National Archives using pre-existing digital mapping data, see: http://labs.nationalarchives.gov.uk/wordpress/.

For various perspectives on the relationship between text and maps, see: Andrews, 346–8, 358–9; Delano-Smith and Kain, 2, 112, 246–7; Love, Archival maps, 77; Robinson et al., 332–6, 400.

The best-known (but not the only) examples including pre-twentieth century material are the Foreign Office (record series FO 925), Colonial Office (series CO 700) and War Office (series WO 78) map collections.

An estimated 80% of maps held at The National Archives fall into this category. Rose Mitchell, personal communication.

The discussion of enclosure records in this paper is based on: Tate, A Domesday of English enclosure acts and awards, 39–41; Kain, Chapman and Oliver, chapter 1; Kain and Baigent, 237–44; The National Archives, Enclosure awards. Between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, English and Welsh enclosure awards could be enrolled in various different places in central government records. Recovery Rolls, which were mainly used for recording common recoveries and other proceedings brought before the court, include many enclosure awards.

This only applies to those enclosure awards that included maps, which many earlier ones did not.

MPL 1/59 (extracted from CP 43/8869). Like many enclosure maps held at The National Archives, this is now stored separately from the award for better preservation and access.

The discussion of tithe survey records in this paper is based on: Kain and Oliver, The tithe maps of England and Wales, Introduction, 706–810; Kain and Prince, The tithe surveys of England and Wales, chapter 3; Kain and Baigent, 246–54; Beech and Mitchell, Maps for family and local history, chapter 2; The National Archives, Tithe records. Although the survey was government-commissioned, the individual maps were made privately.

For various reasons (e.g., where tithes had already been commuted under an enclosure award), the need to create a tithe map and apportionment did not apply in some areas.

For practical reasons, a map and the related apportionment are now stored separately (as record series IR 30 and IR 29, respectively) and cited by separate document references; intellectually, they remain one record.

The full recordkeeping system was even more complex: tithe files (now record series IR 18) were created for all tithe districts, whether or not an apportionment and map were needed, and many later altered apportionments are filed with the original apportionments. The original apportionments and maps were made in triplicate: many of the additional copies are now held in local authority record offices.

This does not mean that the individual maps were uniform in appearance: they were not. Kain and Oliver, 808–10.

Various kinds of non-cartographic finding aids and indexes created by government departments and law courts during the nineteenth century also anticipate linked entries or multiple ways of searching. Amanda Bevan, personal communication. The recordkeepers who made them had the mindset for creating databases but not the computer technology to make databases work.

Examples include two largely twentieth century Colonial Office map collections (records series CO 1047 and CO 1054).

These awards now comprise records series MAF 1.

O'Toole and Cox, Understanding archives and manuscripts, 29. The representations of registered designs (records series BT 42–53) are a clear example: the representations are in a variety of media (e.g. fabric samples) and are cross-referenced with separate, text-based registers. The National Archives, Registered designs and trademarks.

Fewer than 3% of tithe maps were printed. Kain and Oliver, 732.

Most tithe maps had to be either newly surveyed or carefully revised especially for the purposes of the survey rather than being copies from existing printed or manuscript mapping. Kain and Oliver, 708–15. It was also easier and cheaper to produce a very small number of manuscript copies than a small print run. Andrews, 339.

Beech, 191–3; Seymour, 112–3, 133–4; Kain and Baigent, 260–1.

Owen and Pilbeam, 46–54; Seymour, 124–6; Oliver, 17, 35, 41.

The discussion of Valuation Office survey records in this paper is based on: Short, Land and society in Edwardian Britain, part I; Beech and Mitchell, chapter 3; The National Archives, Valuation Office records.

Due to legal challenges, the outbreak of the First World War and the subsequent repeal of the legislation, the survey did not in fact generate any revenue.

The record plans (various record series under department IR) and field books (series IR 58) for England and Wales are held at The National Archives; similar records for Scotland are held at The National Archives of Scotland. ‘Domesday books’ (or Valuation books) from earlier in the recordkeeping process are usually preserved in local authority archives. Many local authority record offices also hold ‘working plans’ used as part of the survey. Some completed examples of the various forms used as part of the survey also survive. Records for some areas were destroyed in fires and Second World War bombing.

For example, although figures 3c and 3d show parts of the same property, they come from different Ordnance Survey map sheets.

As Ordnance Survey revised or enlarged some of the map sheets especially for the survey and district Valuation Offices sometimes reused the maps for other purposes and replaced damaged maps with more recent editions, the resulting accumulation is extremely varied. Oliver, 36–7.

IR 123/6/728.

Both the maps and field books are thus varieties of pre-printed forms.

IR 58/65708 entry number 4.

IR 123/6/729.

The Valuation Office survey contains information on public rights of way because a landowner could claim a deduction from increment value duty if a right of way passed across his or her land. Short, 126; Beech and Mitchell, 63.

These ‘old field numbers’ or parcel numbers originally related to the published books of reference to land-use information produced to accompany the earlier 1:2,500-scale Ordnance Survey maps. Oliver, 35, 74.

Two examples are: Oliver, 25; Armitage, Ordnance Survey land valuation plans.

Andrews, 226.

Similarly, the increased creation and use of maps in the sixteenth century was due not only to improved mapmaking techniques but to the ‘the acceptance and spread of unfamiliar concepts’. Harvey, 16. This parallels M.T. Clanchy's identification of a literate mentality as a prerequisite for (text-based) recordkeeping. Clanchy, From memory to written record, 185–6.

Franklin regards technology as being fundamentally about systems, organisation and mindsets. Franklin, 12.