NLS - Ordnance Survey National Grid maps, 1940s-1960s

Looking at the list of maps for any particular area it seems all the placeholders are in place for most maps into the seventies so that explains why the 1969 lot were online so quickly.

I live in hope that the Admiralty Charts for the rest of the UK will join them.

I think someone said that NLS have had grants for some of their map digitisation projects which is why they have been doing the whole UK.

We are supposed to be having a talk at our History Society by Christopher Fleet (?) next year so looking forward to that.

Looking at the sporadic coverage of the 1969 "orange" outlines in the link it appears that major updates are carried out over a number of years so 1969 was probably part of an update started in the late sixties and continued into the early seventies. Not sure when the Metric maps started but 1974 springs to mind.

NLS and NCAP seem to be the digital custodians of maps and aerial photos fro the whole of the UK but with a slight favouring of Scotland, for obvious reasons. I did wonder how old-maps.co.uk can compete in the next few years.

As it is dated 1939 I suspect it is out of copyright

These seem to appear on eBay on a regular basis priced from £4.95 to £195.00. The latter price point usually justified by a few keywords: RARE, SCARCE, SPITFIRE PILOT'S MAP etc.

I bought a job lot for just under £20 but found them of little use as they didn't show ranges so sold them to a local second hand bookshop. The aeronautical ones are far more interesting.

There are quite a few wartime maps on the NLS map site.

NLS have Tweeted a useful tool that they have added.

NLS Map Collections
@natlibscotmaps

We've just added a new function to our website - now you can zoom in to an individual map sheet then hold [Alt] and Click to view the georeferenced location.

Hope you find it useful!

Series maps area listed at maps.nls.uk/series/