England – The Map Room https://www.maproomblog.com Blogging about maps since 2003 Mon, 06 May 2024 13:16:30 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.maproomblog.com/xq/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/cropped-logo-2017-04-32x32.jpg England – The Map Room https://www.maproomblog.com 32 32 116787204 North Yorkshire Bans Apostrophes on Street Signs, Outrage Ensues https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/05/north-yorkshire-bans-apostrophes-on-street-signs-outrage-ensues/ Mon, 06 May 2024 13:16:27 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1830659 More]]> North Yorkshire council announced that apostrophes would be removed from street signs to avoid running into problems with geographical systems; as the Grauniad reports, this move has “provoked the wrath of residents and linguists alike.” Okay, several things. One, the standard being cited, BS 7666, from what I can gather (I can’t actually find BS 7666 online, just several guides to it), doesn’t ban apostrophes and other punctuation marks, it just deprecates them as a best practice. Two, removing apostrophes breaks Irish names—no O’Reilly Street, for example—and as such in an English context is Not a Good Look. And three, any database that breaks in the presence of an apostrophe is incompetently done. [Brian Timoney]

]]> 1830659 World War II Aerial Reconnaissance Photos of England https://www.maproomblog.com/2023/09/world-war-ii-aerial-reconnaissance-photos-of-england/ Fri, 08 Sep 2023 12:32:59 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1818376 More]]> Historic England has posted some 3,600 aerial images of England, of a collection totalling more than 20,000, taken during World War II by USAAF reconnaissance aircraft. This was done as part of the crews’ training—their job was to collect aerial photos of Nazi Germany and occupied Europe, but they needed to practise first—and as so often happens in history, information collected for one purpose can pay unexpected and unrelated historical dividends: a wealth of aerial imagery from 1943 and 1944. The images are available via this interactive map. [PetaPixel]

Previously: Historic England’s Aerial Photo Explorer.

]]> 1818376 Historic England’s Aerial Photo Explorer https://www.maproomblog.com/2022/03/historic-englands-aerial-photo-explorer/ Wed, 23 Mar 2022 14:41:21 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1806487 More]]> Historic England’s new Aerial Photo Explorer allows users access to an archive of some 400,000 digitized aerial photographs taken over the past century. From their announcement: “Aerial imagery provides a fascinating insight into the development and expansion of the nation’s urban centres and changes to the rural landscape. It can also reveal striking discoveries—such as ‘cropmarks’ showing hidden, archaeology beneath the surface.” I notice that it also includes aerial photos of World War II bomb damage.

]]> 1806487 Sheldon Tapestry Map of Oxfordshire on Display https://www.maproomblog.com/2019/07/sheldon-tapestry-map-of-oxfordshire-on-display/ Mon, 22 Jul 2019 13:13:22 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1787513 More]]>
The Sheldon Tapestry Map of Oxford (detail)

In case the Talking Maps exhibition (previously) was insufficient cause for you to visit the Bodleian Library in Oxford this year, here’s another. The Sheldon Tapestry Map of Oxfordshire, one of four tapestry maps of English counties commissioned in the late 16th century by Ralph Sheldon, is on display at the Bodleian’s Weston Library. The tapestry is partially complete—intact it would have measured 3.5 × 5.5 metres—and on display for the first time in a century, having gone through a “painstaking” restoration. BBC News, Londonist.

The Oxfordshire tapestry map replaces a display of the Worcestershire tapestry map that had been running for the past four years: both were donated to the Bodleian by Richard Gough in 1809. The Bodleian acquired a sizeable section of the Gloucestershire map in 2007 (it went on display the following year); other parts are in private hands. The fourth tapestry map, of Worcestershire, is the only one that is completely intact and not missing any pieces: it’s owned by the Warwickshire Museum, where it’s on display at the Market Hall Museum.

]]> 1787513 Fast Food vs. Schools in London https://www.maproomblog.com/2017/11/fast-food-vs-schools-in-london/ Wed, 29 Nov 2017 15:23:01 +0000 http://www.maproomblog.com/?p=6190 More]]>

One of the proposals in the new draft London Plan is to prohibit new fast food establishments within 400 metres of an existing school as a means of combatting childhood obesity.1 This is going over about as well as you’d think. Dan Cookson has mapped the locations of London’s fast food establishments and the 400-metre exclusion zones around each school; his map suggests a problem: there would be few places in the city able to host a new fast food joint.

Related, via Maps Mania: the Guardian’s interactive map of fast food shops in England.

]]> 6190 Christopher Saxton Remembered in Leeds https://www.maproomblog.com/2017/10/christopher-saxton-remembered-in-leeds/ Thu, 26 Oct 2017 13:00:17 +0000 http://www.maproomblog.com/?p=5466 More]]>
Christopher Saxton, Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales, 1579. British Library.

The Yorkshire Society has erected a plaque in Tingley, Leeds, West Yorkshire, to commemorate the 16th-century cartographer Christopher Saxton, the Yorkshire Evening Post reports. Saxton produced the first county maps of England and Wales; they were collected in his 1579 Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales. A major name in the history of British cartography (see this page about Saxton from the University of Glasgow Library), Saxton was born in West Yorkshire—thus the local interest. [WMS]

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