Maps and Mapping

Online/Software

Creating your own printed maps

Example

Sources

Until the exciting work being undertaken by the GB Historical GIS Project in digitising all the Victorian post 1837 registration district boundary changes is made available to a wider audience, in order to create your own maps, you will need to consult the following original sources :-

Registration District Maps (England and Wales)

---Original maps in the Public Record Office

The Public Record Office -in class RG 18- holds a set of Victorian registration district maps. These class RG18 maps appear to be contemporary OS 1" to a mile maps that were adapted by the Office of the Registrar General for its own purposes. Copies may be obtained from the microfilm version; but colour copies were due to be re-produced.

-1891 Census - "The maps are a mixture of Old and New Series 1" to the mile maps with each registration district cut out, and stuck on a separate piece of canvas with sub-districts and civil parishes marked. Any updates were marked in pen on the maps and they were subsequently used for the 1901 Census. They are complete for England and Wales."
Example of an 1891 map

-1871 Census - "Class RG18 1-73 are claimed by the PRO to be for 1870. They are complete Old Series 1" to the mile OS maps with registration districts, sub-districts and tithe districts, but not parish boundaries" Chris Bennett feels that these maps may in fact have been compiled for the 1851 Census, and updated accordingly. "Approximately 20% of England and Wales is missing, especially around London and the Thames Estuary, and also Portsmouth"

-1851-1861 Census. This subset of RG18 maps is not complete, as some of the maps do not survive.

-1841 Census - Apparently, there is a 2 volume set in the library of the Royal Geographical Society.
However:-

• "They only cover the area south of an imaginery line roughly drawn between Preston and Hull, as the OS 1" maps from which they are drawn were only drawn for this area by 1841.
• The parish boundaries seem to be representative rather than accurate."

---Published maps

For the publication of nearly every decennial Census Abstract (1831,1851,1871 and 1891) an accompanying set of maps was specifically commissioned at a differing scale. (The 1891 maps are scale 1"=12 miles, except London which is 5/8"=1 mile.)

David Smith in his 'Victorian maps of the British Isles' (Batsford, 1985) states of these maps:-

The 1831 lithographed maps of grouped counties were divided into 'Parish-Register Limits', gave tables of population statistics around the map for each county, and on the map face, for each area, listed population figures for 1801, 1811,1821, and 1831, and baptism, burial and marriage figures for 1800,1810,1820 and 1830.
The 1851 divisional maps bore the signature 'W Bone Del' and 'Day & Son, Lith^rs to the Queen', and denoted only registration counties and registration districts, with the districts listed with their 'Area in Acres' and the 1851 population.
The 1871 divisional maps of registration districts covering the 11 registration divisions were 'Lithographed by W & A.K. Johnston, 74 Strand'. 'The population of each town (in 1871) is shewn in round numbers by the character of the lettering of its name, as well as by the symbol which indicates its position. In the case of towns which have a population of 10,000 and 250,000 each black dot represents 10,000 inhabitants.'
The 1891 Census maps were adapted from the 1871 maps by the deletion of the lithographer's signature and the addition of a 'Reference to Boundaries & Symbols' defining registration divisions , registration counties, registration districts, registration district symbols, and registration county symbols. A note describing 'Detached portions' was also added.

Above extracts reprinted by kind permission of Chrysalis Books

The 1851,1871, and 1891 maps are reproduced in the Irish Universities Press reprint of the Census Abstracts, and should be found in most University libraries.

The 1851 Registration District Maps and the 1831 County Maps from the Census Abstract volumes have now been reproduced online by the AHDS

-1901 maps
The county reports which accompany the 1901 census abstracts contain excellent heliozincographed maps of each individual
county. Boundaries are delineated down to registration sub-district level.

-1911 maps-
The 1911 census saw the "preparation of preliminary set of maps, begun two years in advance of the census". This "was carried out by reference to local maps and records which were borrowed for the purpose. With the co-operation of the Ecclesiastical Commission and of the Diocesan Registrars the boundaries of all the ecclesiastical parishes of England and Wales were charted. The preliminary set was then sent to the Ordnance Survey Department where a second set of maps was prepared for each registration sub-district showing in distinctive colours the boundaries of civil parishes; urban districts; municipal boroughs; wards of urban districts; municipal boroughs and parliamentary divisions, and ecclesiastical parishes."
Source: Registrar General England and Wales 1911 Census Report

-1961 maps
The first maps of enumeration district boundaries to become available from the Registrar General are for the 1961 census.

-Current map
A copy of the current civil registration districts may be downloaded from the ONS
(Civil and census registration districts used to be co-terminous, but no longer. Division post-1974? Under different bodies?
Any source of information on this?)

London Registration District Maps

Relevant Maps of the Metropolis can be found in the following sources:-

Examples of all the above maps can be found in :-
K.G. Grytzell County of London : population changes 1801-1901
Sweden: Royal University of Lund, 1969
(Lund Studies in Geography. Series B Human Geography - No 33)

Non-Official Mapping
Recently, Donovan Murrells has been publishing a series of booklets which maps the registration districts of some eastern counties, as they were in 1836. Those for Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Sussex and Kent have appeared to date (See the Bibliography section for further details) Some have been reproduced -with permission- on websites.

And Steve Archer has completed digitising the 1881 registration boundaries to be included in Genmap 2.00 (release date -as yet uncertain)

Parish maps (England and Wales)

The primary source are the OS maps. Carto-bibliography in this area is notoriously complex, but it would appear that the boundaries can be plotted from:-

One-inch Maps : Old Series
Parish boundaries were added progressively between 1849 and 1867, on the Old Series. For the later 1 inch maps (New Series), parish boundaries became standard, but as they were depicted by dots they can unfortunately be easily mistaken for contours or footpaths

Six-inch and 25-Inch Maps
In addition to the actual maps, county index maps were produced to these at 1/4" scale. They are of interest because, although not part of a national series, the plans of some counties (up to 1873) were published in parish map format.
The counties that were issued as parish plans would appear to be:-

Cumberland 1859-65, Durham 1854-67, Essex (in part) 1861-76, Hants 1856-75, Isle of Man 1866-9, Kent 1858-73, Middlesex 1862-8, Northumberland 1856-64, Surrey (in part) 1861-71, Westmoreland 1856-9, Denbigh 1870-5, Flint 1869-72, Glamorgan 1867-78, Monmouth 1875-85, Pembroke 1860-88

The above dates being the dates of survey for the First Editions

David Smith expands:-

"Although a few eighteenth-century large-scale maps, such as Thomas Martyn's Cornwall (1748) and John Rocque's Middlesex (1754) and Berkshire (1761), had included parish boundaries, it was only when Greenwoods produced their large-scale county series and the Ordnance Survey issued the 'Index to the Tithe Survey' that these boundaries were mapped for the most of the country (however, then only with great difficulty for the location of many boundaries was vague and not recorded on any local maps)."

"The most comprehensive mapping of parishes was undertaken for the Poor Law Commissioners, under the provisions of the Parochial Assessments Act, when some 4000 parishes in England and Wales, were surveyed and revalued between 1836 and 1843, and by the Ordnance Survey which produced its early 25" sheets as parish plans."

"Legislation in 1841 placed the responsibility for ascertaining and recording public boundaries in Great Britain and the Isle of Man on the Board of Ordnance; the county index maps to the 25" Ordnance series marked parish boundaries throughout; in 1879 the boundaries of ecclesaiastical parishes, hundreds, and wapentakes were replaced by civil parishes on Survey maps; and in 1887 the Ordnance introduced urban districts, in 1888 Poor Law unions, and in 1899 rural districts."

Above extracts reprinted by kind permission of Chrysalis Books

County Administrative Maps
However. the cornerstone -for any national study of parish mapping - is the 2nd edition of the 2 miles to the inch County Administration area maps produced by the OS between 1907 and 1910. They show parishes, as well as Poor Law Unions. This 2nd edition is preferable to the 1st (c 1900) and the 4 miles to the inch maps of 1888, because this 2nd edition used a single projection for the whole country.

Hindle says:-

"Of some interest to the historian may be the county administrative maps, published mostly at half-inch scale from the late 1880s. They developed from the county index maps to the 6-inch and 25-inch plans which showed parish boundaries. The earliest administrative maps were at quarter-inch scale, and showed civil parishes and sanitary districts. By 1900, similar maps at half-inch scale were appearing showing, in addition, poor law unions, rural and urban districts and boroughs. Since then, they have added river catchment area boundaries and Parliamentary divisions. From 1965 their scale was changed to 1:100,000"

J B Harley in "The Historian's Guide to Ordnance Survey Maps" expands:-

"...these are the County Administrative Maps and Diagrams published since the end of the nineteenth century at both 1/4" and 1/2" to the mile scales. For each county the information on administrative boundaries has been abstracted from the larger scale maps and the resulting series forms a concise guide to changing administrative geography. It would seem that the diagrams developed from the indexes published in the late nineteeenth century to show the sheet lines of the 25" and 6" maps. The indexes to the 25" series were first published for each parish at the 1" scale, but as the survey of a county was completed, a county index, usually at a 1/4" or 1/2" scale, was published. As these depicted parish boundaries as well as sheet lines, there was a ready made base map for the diagrams. Moreover, in the same period agreement was reached about the boundaries which were to be represented on Ordnance Survey Maps... It was against this background that the earliest county diagrams were published in the late 1880s at the 1/4" scale. By 1900 several 1/4" series had appeared showing civil parishes, civil parishes and sanitary districts, and civil parishes with a table of their areas. Subsequently, new series showing civil parishes and their acreages and petty sessional divisions and civil parishes were published, frequently as the need arose for revision within a county. By 1900 a series of county administrative diagrams at the 1/2" scale were also under way. The earliest editions show the boundaries of the poor law unions, rural and urban districts, sanitary districts, boroughs and civil parishes in addition to the 25" sheet lines"

Republication rights in the above extract lies with the Standing Conference for Local History (now the BALH) -permission to reproduce here is being applied for

This series was still being published in 1964, when Harley continued:-

"Today these 1/2" county diagrams are published in two versions: one edition shows local government boundaries in red and parliamentary divisions in green; another edition, local government boundaries only in red...The equivalent administrative diagrams for the county of London have been published at the 1" scale."

 

The History Data Service (now the AHDS) at the University of Essex has just published (June 2001) a gazetteer (with useful introduction) of parishes and an accompanying CD of parish boundaries, reflecting boundaries pre-1850 Roger Kain and Richard Oliver 'The Historic Parishes of England and Wales : an electronic map of boundaries before 1850 with a gazetteer and metadata '

Non-Official Mapping
For the tyro, the most accessible printed parish maps (for England, Wales and Scotland) can be found in the Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers or maybe purchased separately by county. These however only depict the ancient parishes as they existed before 1832, and the date of the surviving registers of each parish. A more definitive static picture of the ancient parishes as they existed pre-1850 is being produced by Roger Kain -an expert in historic OS mapping- at Exeter University. (Project announced in Oct 1997). This work is being digitised and will eventually be issued with an accompanying gazetteer in Cd-Rom format. I am uncertain as to whether it will cover Scotland. Before then, if you do immediately require a digital representation, then the ancient parishes are gradually appearing in digitised form through the MACH 1881 County publication program. The source of his mapping is I believe a contemporary Atlas -probably Blacks.
Steve Archer's Genmap Version 1 includes parishes as a dot distribution for the whole of England and Wales

Scotland

Help would be appreciated on the sources available on the mapping Scotland's parishes and registration districts. I believe that the map section of the National Library of Scotland holds some maps
(for example, Stanfords map (1882) is online at the National Library of Scotland)

Also useful, is 'The Registration Districts of Scotland from 1855' published by the GRO for Scotland, which lists all the districts
(By 1855 Scotland had been divided into 1027 Registration Districts. These Registration Districts generally were either whole parishes or sub-(divisions of parishes.)

Contemporary Atlases

Again, I would like a piece here on the usefulness of Atlases like Blacks etc. But I need some help.

Sources of further information on individual units

Locating Maps:-

-GENERAL

• Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England , compiled by Frederick Youngs
  Vol 1 -Southern England Volume 2 - Northern England
  Royal Historical Society (1980: 1991)
  A meticulous guide to registration districts, ancient, ecclesiastical, civil parishes and townships etc, with date of alterations and superior administrative units
  
• Welsh Administrative and Territorial Units: Medieval and Modern, by M Richards
  Cardiff, 1969
  "A detailed listing of all units, with maps of medieval commotes, post-medieval hundreds and modern local government areas"

-REGISTRATION DISTRICTS

-National

• Registrar General's Decennial Supplements (1861 to 1896).
  These list the districts affected, the area transferred, some measure of the population involved, and the exact date of the change
  
• Registration Districts in England and Wales, compiled by Brett Langston
  Internet resource: lists Registration districts by county, with commencement dates, and the parishes that they covered
  
• The Registration Districts of Scotland from 1855
  Edinburgh: General Register Office for Scotland, 1995?
  
• Index to Census Registration Districts 1841 to 1891, compiled by the late M E Briant Rosier
  5th edition: Waterlooville,Hampshire:The Author, 1995
  Useful as it links Registration Districts to Piece Numbers
  
• Making Use of the Census, by Susan Lumas
  4th edition
  London: PRO Publications,
  Appendix 5 -Registration Districts has a useful list comparing the census district numbering , 1851-1901
  
• An Index to the Civil Registration Districts of England and Wales 1837 to date, compiled by J.A. Newport
  Selsey: P Pledger, 1989
  Districts in alphabetical order (and by county), with vol numbers 1837-1974
  
• Civil Registration Districts in England and Wales
  Havant: The Staunton Park Genealogy Centre, 1992
  Lists pre-1946 General Registration Districts in England and Wales, with sub-districts and neighbouring districts; also alphabetical subdistrict index
  

-Local

• A Guide to the Registration Districts of Manchester, ed. J.A. Coupe (1984)
• A Guide to the Civil Registration Districts of Cheshire, 1837-1974
  [Warrington]: Family History Society of Cheshire (1996) 90 pages
  
• A Guide Liverpool's Enumeration Districts in the 1851 census, by P.B.Park
  Warrington, 1989

-POOR LAW UNIONS

• Statement of the names of the several Unions and Poor Law Parishes in England and Wales
  (BPP [C.-5191] 1887 LXX)
  Gives the dates for the creation of each union and subsequent changes, pre-1861
  
• Poor Law Union Records (Part) 4- Gazetteer of England and Wales, compiled by Jeremy Gibson and Frederic Youngs, Birmingham: FFHS, 1993
  A reprint of the Poor Law Union information contained in the above

-PARISHES

• A thousand years of the English parish : medieval patterns and modern interpretations, by Anthea Jones
  The Windrush Press, 2000
  
• A parish finder for England, compiled by Graham Jaunay
  Plympton, Australia, The Author, 1996
  Alphabetical index of ancient parishes, with church dedication, and county
  
• Discovering parish boundaries, by Angus Winchester
  Shire Publications, 2nd ed. 2000
  
• Dividing lines in a moorland landscape : Territorial boundaries in upland England
  Angus Winchester Landscapes 2 (2000) pp16-32

• The parishes of medieval Scotland, by I B Cowan
  Edinburgh: Scottish Record Society, 1967
  "An alphabetical listing of all parishes in existence before 1560"

• Boundaries of counties and parishes in Scotland as settled by the Boundary Commissioners under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889, by H Shennan
  Edinburgh: William Green, 1892
  "Gives the text of orders made by the Commissioners and explanations of boundary changes thus made , including details of places transferred from one place to another"
  
• Index to the townlands & towns, parishes & Baronies of Ireland
  Genealogical Publishing Company, 1997
  "The volume comprises the Census of Ireland and includes the Ordnance Survey map sheet numbers, the county, barony, parish and poor law union in which the townlands are situated and the volume & page of the townland census of 1851. This contains the population and number of houses in 1841 & 1851 and the poor law valuation in 1851."
  

Local

• Old parish boundaries of Staffordshire: a guide to the administrative units of Staffordshire, by Cockin,Tim  
  Malthouse Press, 2005  -Isbn: 0953901815

Copyright
Ordnance Survey maps over 50 years old may be copied freely. It is courteous and good practice to quote the details of the original source in full.

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Last revised: February 11, 2006.