The Great Britain Historical GIS Project is (at last) nearing the end of
its lottery-funded work, which covered many extensions to our data but NOT
boundary mapping. One line of future work we are investigating is mapping
of Parliamentary Constituencies, and the main source would obviously be the
reports of the boundary commissioners.
My guess is that most of these reports are of no great cartographic
interest, superimposing boundary lines on available OS maps. However, the
first report in 1831 is maybe an exception and I am wondering what existing
research there is on it.
It was carried out long before the OS had finished mapping parish
boundaries, etc, and the commissioners seem to have done some surveying of
their own, led by Robert Dawson of the Royal Engineers. For an extended
quote from page 8 of the instructions to the commission, see below.
If we were to undertake this project, is there a case for image scanning at
least some of the maps in the reports, as well as adding boundary lines
from them to our system?
More generally, what we would be aiming to do would be to add information
on relationships between constituencies and units we had already mapped,
most obviously parishes. Wherever possible, we would then use the latter's
boundaries as building blocks for the constituencies. Conversely, where we
did have to add new lines from the reports to our system, we would be
trying to use them to plug various gaps in our system: for example, in the
boundaries of boroughs, hundreds etc, and those of Registration
sub-Districts. In practice, a great deal of this would be about boundaries
in and around towns.
Best wishes,
Humphrey Southall
=====================================================
"Plans of three-fourths of the Boroughs of England are to be procured from
the Ordnance Survey, and will be furnished to the different
districts. Where the Ordnance Survey does not extend, the deficiency will,
for the most part be made good by private plans, by plans of parishes, &c.
and occasionally by plans taken from published works. For example, Baine's
Lancashire contains Plans of all the principal Towns in that County. It
will generally be necessary in this latter case, to have the Plan somewhat
extended, so as to take in more of the surrounding country, and then to
have the Boundaries of parishes and townships inserted. For this purpose it
will be necessary to employ Surveyors. Arrangements have been made by
Lieutenant Dawson for procuring the services of some good Surveyors in each
district, and every thing connected with this branch of the duty is
confided to his management.
====================================
Humphrey Southall
Reader in Geography/Director,
Great Britain Historical GIS Project
Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth
Buckingham Building, Lion Terrace, Portsmouth PO1 3HE
GIS Project Office: (023) 9284 2500
Home office: (020) 8853 0396
Mobile: 0796 808 5454
Web site: http://www.VisionOfBritain.org.uk
About us: http://www.gbhgis.org
|