Please note: this help page refers to the previous version of Historic Download which is due to be withdrawn in December 2015, all functionality is now available in the new Historic Download application.
On the first page of the download interface you can choose between the 3 different historical mapping products. The different products cover different scale and date ranges, information can be found next to the icon for each one.
Once you have selected your product you will be asked to select the scale and whether you want the data as the Original Map sheets or National Grid Tiles. Click continue once you are happy with your selection.
More details about the options:
More details about the products:
Different scales within a product are completely different sets of maps with different coverages and publish dates. See the product outlines below for more information about the different scales. Note that the Town Plans cover a limited number of Towns and cities, the link below shows a list of the towns covered by the product.
The list of Towns covered by the Town Plans data
The Original Sheets are tiff images of the original maps sheets, they have been scanned and georeferenced so it is possible to use them in certain graphics packages and in GIS software. The marginalia from the Map Sheets was cropped off during the production process so is not available. The National Grid Tiles are the same data as the original sheets but the map sheets have been used to create a mosaic that covers the whole of the extent of each edition of that particular dataset. These mosaics have then been divided up into tiles based on the British National Grid and cut out into smaller squares of data that match up to the contemporary Ordnance Survey mapping. Again the data is available as tiff images with the georeferencing information supplied with them.
If you select both you will select the data by the national grid tiles and get all the original sheets that intersect the tiles you choose.
The Town Plans dataset cover the major urban centres from around the last half of the 1800s, with revisions continuing till 1939. The town plans were made at three scales; 1:1056, 1:528 and 1:500. There is not much overlap in the area covered between these scales except in some of the major cities. Map sheets and tiles for all the scales are combined into one dataset though you can remove any scales you are not interested in at a later stage in the download process. As the plans only exist for the centres of the towns that were most important when they were being surveyed, we have produced a list of the towns covered by the product. Have a look to see if there is coverage for the town you are interested in, if not then try the 1:1250 or 1:2500 scale County Series Maps
There are 4 editions of the Town Plans, each covers a smaller number of towns and cities with the 3rd and 4th editions covering only a very small number of cities with most data in the London area.
The list of Towns covered by the Town Plans data
The County Series dataset covers nearly the whole country at the 1:10 560 scale; the 1:2500 scale covers everywhere except the more remote moorland areas. The maps were surveyed by county so there are overlapping sheets at the boundaries. The nature of the overlap can vary, some counties were mapped to the boundary only, and the rest of the sheet was left blank, this means you may get blank National Grid tiles. Other maps used the data form other counties' surveys to fill in the blank area so you may get duplicate data from overlapping tiles. Sometimes the area of a neighbouring county was re-surveyed to fill in the map sheet so you may get different data in overlapping areas. There are some regions where up to 4 counties have overlapped, especially for the 1:10 560 data which has larger sheet sizes.
For more detailed information see the top half of the table on the following page in the About Historic Maps section of the Help Pages:
Summary of maps, scales,
dates and coverage
The National Grid maps come from the beginning of the Post War era of modern mapping of Britain. The maps were produced on the National Grid and so have no overlaps. The coverage is good for most of Britain but poor in the upland areas. The 1:1250 are found only in urban areas and the Latest Edition of the 1:10 000 data has national coverage of the whole of Britain excepting one or two lost map sheets. This last edition is a compound product that includes a map for every location possible at 1:10 000 or 1:10 560, some of the maps in this edition are actually County Series maps as they were the only time the areas were mapped at this scale. Maps can be found that date right up to the conversion of the Ordnance Survey to Digital mapping around 1996.
For more detailed information see the bottom half of the table on the following page in the About Historic Maps section of the Help Pages:
Summary of maps, scales, dates and coverage
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