Maps of Kent & Hastings

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Richard
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Maps of Kent & Hastings

Postby Richard » Sun Jan 14, 2018 6:21 pm

Not sure if we have covered this area already:

The earliest map of Hastings - 1154 (Normans didn't do maps they just made lists)
Henry VIII (ruled 1509 - 1557) As early as 1539, fearing invasion, he called for a coastal survey of England.
Elizabeth I'st (ruled 1558 - 1603) Maps were drawn because of Spanish invasion fears, the Spanish wanted to fight the Protestants and establish Catholic rule, first thrown out under Henry, dissolution of the monasteries released land for property development, also requiring maps.

Maps of Kent
Christopher Saxton - 1575 The earliest printed map which represents Kent with tolerable accuracy and with a respectable amount of detail is a map of the four south-eastern counties (Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Middlesex) drawn by Christopher Saxton.
Philip Simonson 1596 - His map 'A NEW DESCRIPTION OF KENT was far more accurate than either of the previous maps, the half-inch map surveyed and drawn by Simonson (d.1598) of Rochester.
John Norden - 1605, copied Simonsons map it was a pretty map designed as an illustration for William Camden's Britannia.
John Speed - 1611, published a somewhat inaccurate, somewhat simplified copy of Simonson's map in his atlas called 'The theatre of the empire of Great Britaine'.
Within a few years it had picked up some additions from Norden's map.
With the rest of Speed's atlas, this map of Kent was frequently reprinted; and it was very frequently copied by later generations of cartographers - who, whether they knew it or not, were copying a rather poor copy of Simonson's map, enhanced with some antiquarian details copied from Norden's map.

In 1724 Bugden used triangulation to make much more accurate large scale maps of Sussex.

First O.S. mapping was begun in 1747 (Ordnance is a military term and the Defence Ministry Board of Ordnance were charged with producing maps, especially as the French Revolution was rumbling on the other side of the English Channel, there were real fears the bloodshed may sweep across to our shores. Without good British maps the country couldn’t position its armies defensively.
Triangulation using theodolite and trigonometry, enabled a network of accurately measured triangles to be extended to France and then back to a verification baseline in Kent.
The first Ordnance Survey map was published in 1801, a period under George III.
This was a map of England’s most south-easterly county, Kent, which was one area highly vulnerable to French invasion.
Maps were engraved ‘in reverse’ on copper plate which was used for printing.
The entire first series of maps, covering the whole country wasn’t published until 1870.
1824 - Parliament ordered a six inches to the mile accurate map of Ireland which was needed for accurate land taxation purposes. This O.S. map was finished in 1846. (the potato famine started in 1847).

There were calls for similar six-inch surveys in England and Wales. This was the era of railway mania and the previous one-inch map was virtually useless for the new breed of railway engineers.
Zincography (using zinc sheets) began to replace lithography (using stone) as a method of printing, with copper plate engravings still used for the one inch maps.
Photography was introduced to the map making process in 1855 with photozincography being developed, (a photographic method of producing printing plates).
During the First World War, staff from Ordnance Survey were posted overseas, surveyors plotted the lines of trenches and, for the first time, aerial photography was used to capture survey information.

https://www.southdowns.gov.uk/wp-conten ... dscape.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zincography

http://maps.nls.uk/os/25inch/info2.html

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