Chris:

If you could get them done this week and get them to us quickly
(electronic delivery, or Special Delivery), please go ahead on
Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire and Lancashire -- but timing is absolutely
critical. We also need the invoice pretty quickly.

I am assuming this costs £ 15 x 3, +VAT and maybe plus special delivery
postage (electronic delivery obviously preferred, but maybe hard to
organise).

If you can do only one this quickly, do the Birmingham sheet as the
others can be finessed.

I have already gone into why we missed these until the last minute. One
small blessing is that these are out-of-copyright sheets.

Best wishes,

Humphrey

>>> "Fleet, Christopher" <[log in to unmask]> 24/06/09 8:30 AM >>>
Dear Humphrey,

NLS can certainly help you on this, as I suspect can several other legal
deposit and university libraries.

We have editions of these OS half-inch to the mile Administrative and
Parliamentary Areas maps for these counties. We have editions in 1946,
1949, and 1955-1962 for these counties, but I think the 1949 edition
will show the boundaries you need - it certainly has the Birmingham
constituencies you list and Blackburn East and West.

The 1949 edition is in fact stamped as received in NLS in September
1949, and has Administrative Areas revised to 1-4-49 - the Parliamentary
Constituencies are those scheduled in the Representation of the People
Act 1948. 

As you know, we can provide 400 dpi colour scans of these, although we
would charge £15 per scan.

Just let me know if you'd like to discuss or go ahead with this.

Chris

Chris Fleet
Map Library
National Library of Scotland
33 Salisbury Place
EDINBURGH
EH9 1SL
United Kingdom.

Tel. 0131 623 3973
Fax. 0131 623 3971
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

View maps website: http://www.nls.uk/maps

-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for issues related to map & spatial data librarianship
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Humphrey Southall
Sent: 23 June 2009 23:18
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Can anyone locate WARD boundary maps from late 1940s for
Birmingham, Blackburn and Reading?

Judith Fox at Reading got back to me about the Reading boundaries. Her
source was NOT a local map, but a conventional Ordnance Survey county
administrative boundary map of Berkshire (2 miles to the inch, etc).

The project has a fair collection of these, but not this particular
edition.  It was actually dated 1954 but it showed, in green the Reading
South and Reading North constituencies, which existed only between 1949
and 1955.

So if anyone has similar maps of Birmingham/Warwickshire,
Blackburn/Lancashire or Nottingham/Nottinghamshire please get in touch.

The Birmingham constituencies are our biggest problem, and a bit hard to
explain, but the map needs to show the Erdington and Kings Norton
constituencies (both abolished in 1954), but also the Hall Green,
Northfield, Perry Barr, Small Heath and Stechford constituencies (all
created in 1949). 

The Lancashire map needs to show Blackburn divided into Blackburn East
and Blackburn West, a division which existed only between 1949 and 1954;
at all other dates between 1832 and the present Blackburn was a single
constituency.

I did not mention Nottingham before, but we need a map that shows the
Nottingham North West constituency, that existed only between 1949 and
1954.

Deepest thanks for any help anyone can give us with these, especially if
they can send scans -- we are now very short of time, as this problem
only showed up when we finally mated the election result data with the
mapping.

Humphrey

>>> Francis Herbert <[log in to unmask]> 23/06/09 10:00 PM
>>>
Humphrey:

Have you enquired of Birmingham City Libraries (History and
Geography/Local Studies collections) direct? Hopefully the other two
cities' authorities will have similar, possibly un- 'published', ward
boundary information.

Francis (Herbert)

-----Origi
nal Message-----
From: A forum for issues related to map & spSent: 23 June 2009 15:25
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Can anyone locate WARD boundary maps from late 1940s for
Birmingham, Blackburn and Reading?

The GB Historical GIS team are in the final stages of finalising the
revised version of their system for the re-launch of the Vision of
Britain web site in two weeks time.

One of the major new features is mapping of parliamentary election
results for the last 175 years, combining election statistics compiled
by FWS Craig with boundaries digitised from the reports of the
Parliamentary Boundary Commissions.

... or so we thought!

When we started this project, our understanding was that although the
boundaries in the Commission reports were proposals, Parliament could
accept them as a whole or reject them as a whole.  However, in the late
1940s Parliament definitely tinkered with them, and we have a few
boundaries which were in use for the 1950 and 1951 General Elections
which we cannot find on any maps.

We have been able to find Parliamentary reports which do define these
constituencies, but only in terms of the wards then in use for local
administration, without any maps.

Does anyone have maps showing ward boundaries within these Boroughs, for
around 1948/9?

NB at this stage in the project, very rough maps will do, e.g. quite
small maps from books, especially if you could scan and e-mail a copy to
us.

The Boroughs concerned are:

Birmingham

Blackburn

Reading

Blackburn and Reading were each divided into just two constituencies,
East/West and North/South respectively, so in desperation we can draw
straight lines, but Birmingham was divided into ten constituencies which
differed both from those in use pre-1949 and from those used post-1954
-- so we need a map of the wards, or of the constituencies themselves.

Thanks,

Humphrey Southall
***********************************************************************
Visit the National Library of Scotland online at www.nls.uk
***********************************************************************
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

This communication is intended for the addressee(s) only. If you
are not the intended recipient, please notify the Information Services
Helpdesk on +44 131 623 3789 or [log in to unmask] and delete this
e-mail. The statements and opinions expressed in this message are those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the National
Library of Scotland. The National Library of Scotland is a registered
Scottish charity. Scottish Charity No. SC011086. This message is subject
to the Data Protection Act 1998 
and Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and has been 
scanned by Webroot.
***********************************************************************