Author Archives: Martin Davis

Maps on the radio

Two members of the Map Room team have recently been featured on WRFM, a local radio station based in West Oxfordshire. Science on the Radio is a weekly show, interviewing local experts across a range of fields connected with the sciences, presented by Nina Morgan and Grant Grindley. Broadcast every weekend, the show is also available online as an on-demand podcast.

‘Fascinating Maps‘ is a recent episode featuring Nick Millea, in which he talks about the 3D facsimile of the 15th century Gough Map of Great Britain (MS Gough Gen. Top. 16), recently produced by the Factum Foundation in Madrid. Nick explains that recent high resolution 3D recording of the map has revealed pinholes invisible to the naked eye, indicating that the map is a copy of an earlier map which does not survive. The 3D scanning unusually included the reverse of the map too, allowing confirmation that the pinholes only appear on the front of the map. Identical in size to the original, the facsimile has already proved useful for teaching and displays.

The Gough Map facsimile on display with other collections at a 'show and tell' event at the Weston Library.
The Gough Map facsimile on display with other collections at a ‘show and tell’ event at the Weston Library.

In ‘Digital Mapping‘, Martin Davis explains how some of our maps are being made available online via Digital Bodleian, and also why the digital maps we use every day pose new challenges for the library. While spatial analysis is something that we tend to associate with digital technology, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Martin explains that the origins of these techniques predate digital technology altogether; for example in the work of the 19th century epidemiologist John Snow on the spread of cholera.

Science on the Radio is broadcast on Saturdays at 10am and Sundays at 6pm, and available any time via wrfm.co.uk.

Digging deep: charting the rise and fall of British coal

Midnight on 1st October 2024 saw the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station close for the final time, marking the end of a 142-year history of coal-based energy production in Britain. The development of coal, industry, and infrastructure have been closely linked throughout this period, with many maps in our collection highlighting these connections.

Small-scale, localised coal mining is likely to have taken place in Britain for several centuries, but it was not until the 18th century that more substantial shafts began to appear on the landscape. This detailed site plan of the coal works at Kinnaird, Scotland is dated 1776, and shows the development of excavations over the preceding 18 months.

A plan of Kinnaird main coal workings at Jan 4th 1775 shewing also the space wrought from that period to 1st Aug. 1776 (1776), Gough Maps Scotland 86

As well as a planimetric map of the site, a cross section is also included, clearly showing the various layers of ‘the different coal’ and the depths and locations of various shafts.

By the mid 19th century, coal production had dramatically increased, providing a crucial catalyst for the industrial revolution. Entire regions became peppered with new collieries, as shown by this ultra large-format 1850 map of the ‘Great Northern Coalfield’, spanning large parts of Northumberland and County Durham.

Map of the great northern coalfield in the counties of Northumberland & Durham, including the whole of the coal mining districts of the Tyne, Wear and Tees and those of Hartlepool, Seaham, Hartley, Blyth and Warkworth, From actual survey by J.T.W. Bell (1850), (E) C17:2 (2)

In some parts, such as this area south west of Bishop Auckland, the concentration of collieries is remarkably dense, appearing very prominently with capitalised labels.

With the increase in coal mining came the increasing need for transport infrastructure to match. The emergence of railways connecting collieries with major cities and ports is clear on the ‘Great Northern’ map, but this 1845 map published by Longman & Co. shows that this development was widespread, and in parallel with the construction of canals. Here, coalfields are indicated using a grey tint, with the Tyne, South Wales, and Firth of Forth coalfields already very substantial by this time.

Map exhibiting the navigable rivers, the completed & proposed canals & railroads of Great Britain & Ireland, with the coal fields, lighthouses etc (1845), (E) C15 (150)

It was not until the 1910s that coal production reached its peak, although coal still accounted for around 90% of UK electricity production until the 1960s, when oil and nuclear began to see significant expansions. The ‘Coal and Iron’ map produced by Ordnance Survey at the end of the Second World War shows the extent of coal mining in Lancashire, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands in particular, immediately prior to nationalisation in 1947.

Great Britain. Coal and Iron. Compiled… from… maps… and from information… referring to the year 1940, sheet 2 (1945), C16 (251) [13]

The closure of the final coal-fired power station is a significant landmark as the UK, alongside many other countries, pursues Net Zero and low-carbon policies. In no small part, this shift has been facilitated by the exponential growth of renewable energy production, including wind, wave, solar, and hydroelectric power.

The 16th edition of the ‘Wind farms’ map, produced by La Tene Maps and RenewableUK in 2020, shows that it is wind farms which now characterise many of our landscapes and seascapes, as the once dominant coal industry continues to fade from view.

Britain – wind farms (2020), C16 (937)

Les cartes olympiques de Paris

Hosting the Olympic Games is a huge task for even the largest and most seasoned of cities, requiring years of careful logistical planning. However, hosting the Games also presents a cartographic challenge, with transport alterations and dozens of temporary venues rendering ordinary city maps inadequate for visitors. Special maps are often commissioned by upcoming hosts, allowing easy navigation by the influx of international travellers. Such event maps are ephemeral by definition, but many are preserved in our collections (you can read more about our collection of Olympic maps here).

As the XXXIII Olympiad draws to a close in Paris, we’ve taken a look back through our collection of maps made for the three Games held in the French capital to date; in 1900, 1924, and 2024.

The 1900 Olympics coincided with the Exposition Universelle, a world’s fair which attracted some 48 million visitors to Paris over a seven-month period. The Parisian publishing house Garnier Frères published this map of the exhibition sites, which clustered around a central portion of the River Seine. It features an overview map alongside four enlarged insets which show the details of the exhibition displays.

Plan de l’exposition universelle de 1900 (1900), C21:50 Paris (8)

Detail showing the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, which were built especially for the event. C21:50 Paris (8)

Foreign publishers also took advantage of the event, with Edinburgh-based W. & A.K. Johnston Ltd. publishing this map for an Anglophone audience. The Johnston map incorporates three different scales on one sheet; the exhibition sites, central Paris, and the whole of France.

W. & A.K. Johnston’s plan of Paris, and Exhibition, and map of France (1900), C21:50 Paris (14)

Detail of the River Seine, showing the ‘foreign section’ and the artistic exhibitions. The river itself hosted the Olympic rowing, swimming, and water polo events in 1900. C21:50 Paris (14)

The first operational part of the Paris Metro opened part way through the 1900 Olympics, but its rapid expansion in the following decades meant that it played a more significant role in subsequent Games. This 1922 map by A. Taride uses a red overprint on a street plan to highlight the lines that would have been at the disposal of visitors to the 1924 Olympics, incorporating the competing Métropolitain and Nord-Sud networks, which did not merge into a unified system until 1930. The centrepiece of the 1924 Games was the Yves du Manoir Stadium in Colombes, which hosted nine sports, in addition to the Opening Ceremony. However, neither the Metro system or Taride’s map extend as far north west as Colombes.

Nouveau plan de Paris avec toutes les lignes du métropolitain et du nord-sud (1922), C21:50 Paris (47)

Detail of the area around the Champs-Élysées and Place de la Concorde, showing the convergence of Metro lines. C21:50 Paris (47)

One hundred years later, the 2024 Games opened in a very different, digital world. This time, organisers have launched a specially designed mobile app which provides dynamic navigation instructions using real-time data to flexibly disperse crowds and ease congestion. Alongside this high-tech solution, the organisers have also provided an outage-proof paper map, which joins our collection hot off the press. While 2024 marks the third time Paris has hosted the Olympic Games, it is the first time that the city has hosted the Paralympic Games, with the map designed to cater for both events.

The Yves du Manoir Stadium reprises its Olympic role as the venue of the hockey tournaments, but once again does not appear within the main map frame, which only includes central Paris. However, the Grand Palais, built for the 1900 exposition, does feature; this time as the Olympic and Paralympic venue for fencing and taekwondo — as well as a cameo in the Opening Ceremony, during which La Marseillaise was performed from its rooftop.

Paris 2024 : plan des transports publics (2024), C21:50 Paris (219)

Produced by Lyon-based firm Latitude-Cartagène (which specialises in event mapping), the Paris 2024 map draws on OpenStreetMap data and, like Taride’s map, focuses on public transport. The map tackles the unenviable design challenge of combining a street plan and extensive transit map with station closure information, 17 Olympic venues, and the locations of the city’s permanent tourist highlights. With an audience travelling from over 200 countries, the cartographer’s brief is made harder by having to avoid any culture-specific conventions or language. All the while, the map must be sympathetic to the Paris 2024 branding style — an important commercial aspect of a modern Games — as well as that of the regional public transport authority, Île-de-France Mobilités. Using a pastel base map, minimal text, pictorial symbols, and a broad colour palette for the thematic content, it clears these hurdles with gold medal-worthy clarity.

Mapping Guyana

Earlier this month, the Map Room was visited by Christina Kumar; a cartographic advisor to the President of Guyana. Over several years, Christina has created a large and highly detailed map of Guyana, and kindly donated a copy to the Bodleian Library during her visit.

Christina Kumar presents the map to Map Curator Nick Millea

The map, more than 1.5 metres in length, provides a detailed picture of the country’s land cover at 1:600,000, as well as its settlements and transport infrastructure. Christina explained how GIS software had been used to process satellite imagery in order to produce a map of this intricacy; including its detailed insets showing oil, mineral deposits, and carbon density. The map also features an attractive street plan of the nation’s capital, Georgetown.

Administrative map of Guyana (2024), H10 (143)

The Bodleian already holds a substantial collection of maps of Guyana, particularly from the British colonial era which officially lasted from 1831 until independence in 1966. The area had previously been in Dutch hands since 1627, with the exception of short-lived periods of French and British occupation. As a result, our collection also includes French and Dutch maps of the region from the late 18th and early 19th centuries; each map a window on the various attempts to understand and control these northern shores of South America. The 1803 British occupation of the Dutch Colony of Berbice (Kolonie Berbice) proved to be longer-lasting, ultimately leading to the formal establishment of British Guiana.

We were happy to show Christina a sample of these European maps, including this Dutch map from 1802, the final year before British occupation. The map shows land holdings along the Berbice River, and features an imaginative cartouche depicting the region’s flora and fauna, perhaps with some artistic license. Christina noted that the cadastral land numbering system still remains in use today and that, with the exception of a few variations in spelling, many of the place names included on the map remain unchanged.

Karte van de Colonie de Berbice gelegen in Bats. Guiana in America (1802), (E) H10:2 (3)

Christina’s new map becomes the most recent addition to this cartographic timeline of Guyanese history; distinctive in its presentation of the nation through local eyes, rather than from a European perspective. In an era when Guyana’s natural resource management and relations with its South American neighbours are high priorities, the role of maps in understanding and administering territory remains crucially important.