Updated Boundaries of Ancient Woodland polygons covering England. This is the updated spatial dataset that describes the geographic extent and location of ancient woodland in England (excluding the Isles of Scilly). Ancient Woodland features will be approved county-by-county for publication throughout the first year of production until the data product coverage extends across England. Where available this dataset takes precedence over the Ancient Woodland – England dataset. The update revises the inventory to address problems and gaps in the previous iteration. Technological advances mean that small ancient woodlands (0.25-2ha) are being represented within the inventory for the first time as well as wood pasture and parkland being represented as its own category. The inventory identifies ancient woodland sites in England. Ancient woodland is identified by studying the presence or absence of woods from historic maps, information about the wood's name, shape, internal boundaries, location relative to other features, ground survey, and aerial photography. The information recorded about each wood and stored on the Inventory Database includes its grid reference, its area in hectares and how much is semi-natural or replanted. Prior to the digitisation of the boundaries, only paper maps depicting each ancient wood at 1:50 000 scale were available. Attribution statement: © Natural England 2024. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database rights 2024. OS AC0000851168. It includes Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland (ASNW), which retains a native tree and shrub cover; Plantation on Ancient Woodland Sites (PAWS), where the original tree cover has been felled and replaced by planting, often with conifers; Ancient Wood Pasture (AWPP), where the trees are managed in tandem with a long established tradition of grazing, characteristically with at least some veteran trees or shrubs or; Infilled Ancient Wood Pasture (IAWPP) which has become infilled with trees arising from planting or natural regeneration. Attribution statement: © Natural England 2023, Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database rights 2023. OS AC0000851168

The Ancient Woodland Inventory identifies over 52,000 ancient woodland sites in England. Ancient woodland is identified using presence or absence of woods from old maps, information about the wood's name, shape, internal boundaries, location relative to other features, ground survey, and aerial photography. The information recorded about each wood and stored on the Inventory Database includes its grid reference, its area in hectares and how much is semi-natural or replanted. Guidance document can be found on our Amazon Cloud Service Prior to the digitisation of the boundaries, only paper maps depicting each ancient wood at 1:50 000 scale were available.Full metadata can be viewed on data.gov.uk.

This map of Medieval England contains a wealth of historical information and sites as well as beautiful illustrations. Published in October 1979 as a companion to the modern map "British Isles".>> Order print map <<

In the middle of 2001 Roger Kain and Richard Oliver, from the University of Exeter, published a substantial work entitled Historic Parishes of England and Wales: Electronic Map - Gazetteer- Metadata. This was the final product of a project aimed at locating and mapping the boundaries of parish and sub-parish units of the mid-nineteenth century. The authors published the results in a series of electronic maps supplied on CD-ROM. Each one of these 115 maps contain a scanned 1”:1 mile OS New Popular Series map, overlain by the boundaries. A reference number can be found in each of the polygons that can then be used to look up information about that parish in gazetteer in an accompanying book. A major limitation of this work is that although the boundaries are in digital form, they are divided into 115 tiles, none of which have any spatial co-ordinate information inherent in them. This means that although the maps are invaluable as a reference tool, they can not be used together within a GIS to select, analyse and present historic information. We have therefore created a single digital map of the boundaries to provide a single, continuous coverage of polygons, each of which contain the information provided by Kain and Oliver in their accompanying book. This information includes the parish name, Ancient County, and a reference number that coincides with entries for that parish in the 1851 census report. It is recommended that users also order disc 1 of study 4348; Historic Parishes of England and Wales : an Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and Metadata Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

An ARC GIS PRO shapefile mapping the turnpike roads in England and Wales for the 18th and early 19th century. The data includes details of the Turnpike Acts, years of operation, the quality of the road and the routes used by Mail coaches. The data forms the basis of the paper "Government, trusts, and the making of better roads in early nineteenth century England & Wales by Rosevear, Bogart & Shaw-Taylor.

These geolocated datasets derive from annotations of Christopher Saxton's County Maps of England & Wales, annotations of published volumes of John Leland's Itineraries in Wales, and annotations of Wenceslaus Hollar's vignettes intended for publication in Britannia.

Please see the GitHub repository for details of the sources used and visualisation of their geographic scope.

The system of Ancient Parishes was not defined by central government, but grew up over the centuries starting in Saxon times. By origin it was an entirely ecclesiastical system, but it became the main geography for a variety of statistical reporting, partly because the main local sources for many government inquiries were the parish priests of the Church of England. Its origins mean there was no central record of the system, and boundary mapping of the whole country by the Ordnance Survey was not completed until the late 19th century, so there is room for substantial debate about what parishes actually existed at a given date. This file was constructed around the county-by-county parish listings of the 1831 Census of Population. Under the Ancient Parish system, many parishes especially in the north of England consisted of a mother parish based on the main settlement, plus surrounding Townships, Chapelries and hamlets (many of which later became separate Civil Parishes): the file makes no attempt to represent those subdivisions, only the overall parishes. Statistical data and other information used in “A Vision of Britain through Time” can be accessed and downloaded here: http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/data.

INDEX VILLARIS: or, An Alphabetical Table of all the cities, market-towns, parishes, villages, and private seats in England and Wales was first published by John Adams in 1680. This dataset consists of a transcription of all 24,000 place-names listed in Index Villaris, together with the the symbols representing Adams's categorisation of each place and modern versions of the place-names and the counties and administrative hundred in which they lie or lay. It also comprises a transcription of the latitude and longitude recorded by Adams, and another set of coordinates generated by the application of a thin plate spline transformation calculated by matching some 2,000 place-names to the accurately-georeferenced CAMPOP Towns dataset.

The dataset is being checked, corrected, and refined to include linkage to other geospatial references such as OpenStreetMap and Wikidata, and will in due course be made available in the Linked Places Format.

ArcGIS shapefile of 288 polygons providing boundary and attribute data for the fifty-five ancient counties of England and Wales as given in the 1831 census for England and Wales. As such this represents the counties of England and Wales as they were before the boundary changes caused by the Counties (Detached Parts) Act, 1844 (7 & 8 Vict. c. 61) which led to the elimination of some of the detached portions of counties.These data were created as part of a research program directed by Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Tony Wrigley, which aims ultimately to reconstruct the evolution of the occupational structure of Britain from the late medieval period down to the early twentieth century. These data derive from the 173 digital maps of the boundaries of English and Welsh parishes and their subdivisions produced by Roger Kain and Richard Oliver based on the listing in the 1851 census. The maps were subsequently converted into a single GIS by Burton et al. The GIS attribute data were checked, edited and enhanced with extra data from the census by Max Satchell, Tony Wrigley and a small army of research assistants with technical support from Peter Kitson and Gill Newton. Max Satchell checked and in some cases edited the GIS polygon data using a variety of cartographic and documentary sources. Of these the most important were digital scans of the Ordnance Survey first edition 1:2500 and 1:10560 maps from the Landmark Group distributed by Edina , the series of maps of registration districts and sub-districts boundaries prepared for the Registrar General prior to the censuses of 1861, 1871 and 1891 and the description of enumeration district boundaries given in the Census Enumerators Books for the censuses from 1851, 1861 and 1871. The 1:63,360 maps and Census Enumerators Books are held in The National Archives, Kew (TNA, RG 18/3-155, 198-227, HO 107, RG 9, RG 10). The work involved changing one or more elements of information about place, parish, county, or three figure census number for 2,461 (10.8 per cent) of 22,729 lines of data in the Kain and Oliver GIS. This editing process saw the redigitisation of 644 of the 22,729 polygons, the deletion of 81 polygons, and the digitisation of 525 new polygons. The original Kain and Oliver parish and place dataset did not give details of which counties its units belonged to in 1831, though the authors did note some units had changed county under the auspices of the act of 1844. Max Satchell with help from Geoffrey Stanning and input from Peter Kitson and Tony Wrigley added the 1831 census counties as an attribute to the parish GIS primarily by systematic comparison between the censuses of 1831 and 1851 - the latter's footnotes being particularly informative concerning changes in the county boundaries. In situations where the 1831 county boundary deviated from the post-1844 alignment the polygons from the Burton et al. GIS were subdivided. At the end of this exercise all 23,177 polygons of the enhanced parish GIS could be assigned an 1831 ancient county. This attribute was then used to generate the shapefile of ancient counties.

These maps are based on the Ordnance Survey 'Old Series' One-Inch maps of England and Wales. They were the first 1:63 360 geological map series produced by the Geological Survey in England and Wales. Sheets were initially published as full sheets, and later as quarter sheets (NW, NE, SW, SE). Earlier maps are hand-coloured, later maps are colour-printed. The maps show both solid and drift geology. The OS 'Old Series' maps extended as far north as a line drawn between Preston and the Humber. To the north of this, the maps use the same sheetlines as the 1:63 360 New Series, and carry two sheet numbers, which refer to the Old Series (91-110) and New Series (1-73) numbering. These maps are common to both series. A sheet that covers the Isle of Man is also included in the series. Geological maps represent a geologist's compiled interpretation of the geology of an area. A geologist will consider the data available at the time, including measurements and observations collected during field campaigns, as well as their knowledge of geological processes and the geological context to create a model of the geology of an area. This model is then fitted to a topographic basemap and drawn up at the appropriate scale, with generalization if necessary, to create a geological map, which is a representation of the geological model. Explanatory notes and vertical and horizontal cross sections may be published with the map. Geological maps may be created to show various aspects of the geology, or themes. These maps are hard-copy paper records stored in the National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC) and are delivered as digital scans through the BGS website.

This layer of the map based index (GeoIndex) shows the availability of 1:63360 scale geological maps. The maps are available for most of England and Wales and show early geological mapping covering the OS Old Series one inch map sheet areas.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. This research project aimed to fill a major lacuna militating against the effective exploitation of many post-medieval to mid-Victorian historical sources collected by local administrative areas: the lack of information on the boundaries of those administrative areas, the so-called 'historic' or 'ancient' parishes of England and Wales. It is known that these districts came into being during the Middle Ages, that the map of these ecclesiastical parishes was essentially complete by the fifteenth century, that these ecclesiastical boundaries were adopted during the early modern period for secular and judicial purposes, and that boundaries remained essentially unchanged until a number of reforms from the mid-nineteenth century onwards reorganised the local administrative geography of the country. The project aimed to reconstruct those boundaries as they were before the post-nineteenth century changes.

This dataset references directly NatureScot's Open Data Hub, the data is not hosted in Stirling's platform and, therefore, will be updated as soon as NatureScot releases any updates.Symbology for the layers published as per NatureScot.https://opendata.nature.scot/A more sophisticated classification was developed for woodlands in Scotland due to the nature of the available historical sources. IMPORTANT. For Scottish woods, the category Ancient comprises woods recorded as being of semi-natural origin on EITHER the 1750 Roy maps OR the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey maps of 1860. This is due a) to the likelihood of the latter having been omitted from the Roy maps and b) to render the Scottish classification compatible with that for England and Wales.

This geolocated dataset derives from several surveys commissioned by the English Crown in 1565, enquiring into the state of the various ports, landing places, and coastal communities of England and Wales.

Please see the GitHub repository for details of the sources used and visualisation of their geographic scope.

The 1:63 360 / 1:50 000 scale map series are the most useful scale for most purposes. They provide almost complete coverage of onshore Great Britain. The BGS collection of 1:63 360 and 1:50 000 scale maps comprises two map series: - Geological Survey of England and Wales 1:63 360 / 1:50 000 Geological Map Series [New Series]. These maps are based on the Ordnance Survey One-inch New Series topographic basemaps and provide almost complete coverage of England and Wales, with the exception of sheet 180 (Knighton). The quarter-sheets of 1:63 360 Old Series sheets 91 to 110 coincide with sheets 1 to 73 of the New Series maps. These earlier maps often carry two sheet numbers which refer to the Old Series and the New Series. - Geological Survey of Scotland 1:63 360 / 1:50 000 Geological Map Series. These maps are based on the Ordnance Survey First, Second, Third and Fourth editions of the One-inch map of Scotland. The maps used the most recent topographic basemap available at the time. In the Western Isles, one-inch mapping was abandoned and replaced by maps at 1:100 000 scale, which are associated with this series. Sheets were traditionally issued at 1:63 360 scale, with the first 1:50 000 maps appearing in 1972. Sheets at 1:50 000 scale may be either facsimile enlargements of an existing 1:63 360 sheets, or may contain new geology and cartography. The latter bear the additional series designation '1:50 000 series'. Within the Scottish series, new mapping at 1:50 000 scale was split into east and west sheets. For example, the original one-inch sheet 32 became 1:50 000 sheets 32E and 32W. A number of irregular sheets were also introduced with the new 1:50 000 scale mapping. There are a number of irregular special sheets within both series. Geological maps represent a geologist's compiled interpretation of the geology of an area. A geologist will consider the data available at the time, including measurements and observations collected during field campaigns, as well as their knowledge of geological processes and the geological context to create a model of the geology of an area. This model is then fitted to a topographic basemap and drawn up at the appropriate scale, with generalization if necessary, to create a geological map, which is a representation of the geological model. Explanatory notes and vertical and horizontal cross sections may be published with the map. Geological maps may be created to show various aspects of the geology, or themes. The most common map themes held by BGS are solid (later referred to as bedrock) and drift (later referred to as superficial). These maps are, for the most part, hard-copy paper records stored in the National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC) and are delivered as digital scans through the BGS website.

Ancient Semi Natural Woodland

The Summarised Botanical Value Map for England is a map identifying areas likely to be rich in high quality habitat based on BSBI vascular plant records.

Under the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) Pilot, Natural England and the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) have been working in partnership to use BSBI's vast database of plant records to inform the evidence base for tree-planting activities. Poorly targeted tree planting risks damaging wildlife and carbon-rich habitats, therefore using these data we aim to ensure that areas of high conservation value are preserved in the landscape.

The summarised botanical value map provides an easily interpretable output which categorises monads (1 x 1 km grid squares) as being of Low, Moderate or High botanical value according to the presence of Rare, Scarce and Threatened (RST) plant species and/or the proportion of Priority Habitat Positive Indicator (PHPI) species that were recorded within the 1 x 1 km grid square between 1970 and 2021. The PHPI species are a combination of BSBI axiophytes, positive indicators for common standards monitoring and ancient woodland indicators. The dataset includes an overall botanical value, as well as values based on only the presence of RST plant species, and a value for each broad habitat type based on the PHPI species records. By viewing the different attributes, you can gain insights into how valuable a monad is for different habitat types and for plant species of conservation concern, as well as an indication of how well a particular monad has been surveyed. The categories of 'No indicators, poor survey coverage' and 'No indicators, good survey coverage' indicate where no indicator species have been recorded and survey coverage either is above or below a threshold of 3 'recorder days'. A 'recorder day' is defined as being when 40 or more species have been recorded on a single visit and 3 recorder days is assumed sufficient to achieve good survey coverage within a 1 x 1 km grid square.

This map is not intended to be used to carry out detailed assessments of individual site suitability for tree planting, for which the RST plant species heatmap at 100 x 100 m resolution and the PHPI heatmaps at 1 x 1 km resolution have been developed by BSBI and Natural England. However, the summarised botanical value map can provide useful insights at a strategic landscape scale, to highlight monads of high value for vascular plants and inform spatial planning and prioritisation, and other land management decision-making. These should be used alongside other environmental datasets and local knowledge to ensure decisions are supported by the appropriate evidence. Please get in contact if you have any queries about the data or appropriate uses at botanicalheatmaps@naturalengland.org.uk

Further information can be found in the technical report here: http://nepubprod.appspot.com/publication/5063363230171136.

A more sophisticated classification was developed for woodlands in Scotland due to the nature of the available historical sources. IMPORTANT. For Scottish woods, the category Ancient comprises woods recorded as being of semi-natural origin on EITHER the 1750 Roy maps OR the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey maps of 1860. This is due a) to the likelihood of the latter having been omitted from the Roy maps and b) to render the Scottish classification compatible with that for England and Wales. More information at the NatureScot website Complete metadata

This is the record for Ancient Semi Natural Woodland which forms a part of the Habitat Networks (Individual) (England) dataset (link below). The habitat network maps seek to apply the best evidence and principles and to use the best available nationally consistent spatial data. The habitat network maps are developed around 4 distinct habitat components sets and include 4 distinct network zones where action may be undertaken to build greater ecological resilience. The different elements of the maps are described below: Habitat Components; • The location of existing patches of a specific habitat for which the network is developed. This is termed the ‘Primary habitat’ e.g. lowland heathland. The main baseline data used for this is the Priority Habitat Inventories (PHIv2.2). • The location of additional habitat that naturally form mosaics with the primary habitat e.g. habitats that are most likely to form ecological mosaics possibly used by species associated with the primary habitat. This is termed the ‘Associated habitat’. The main baseline data used for this is the Priority Habitat Inventories (PHIv2.2). • The locations where habitat creation or restoration is known to occur, this is primarily sites under relevant agri-environment options. This is termed the ‘Habitat creation’ • Sites where data suggests small fragments of the primary habitat or degraded habitat exists and where restoration may be possible, this is primarily developed from information held within the current PHI v2.2. This is termed the ‘Restorable habitat’. Network Zones; • Land within close proximity to the existing habitat components that are more likely to be suitable for habitat re-creation for the particular habitat. These areas are primarily based on soils but in many cases has been refined by also using other data such as hydrology, altitude and proximity to the coast. This is termed the ‘Network Enhancement Zone 1’. • Land within close proximity to the existing habitat components that are unlikely to be suitable for habitat re-creation but where other types of habitat may be created or land management may be enhanced including delivery of suitable Green Infrastructure. This is termed the ‘Network Enhancement Zone 2’. • Land immediately adjoining existing habitat patches that are small or have excessive edge to area ratio where habitat creation is likely to help reduce the effects of habitat fragmentation. This is termed the ‘Fragmentation Action Zone’. • Land within relatively close proximity to the Network Enhancement Zones 1 & 2 that are more likely to be suitable for habitat creation for the particular habitat and identifying possible locations for connecting and linking up networks across a landscape. This is termed the ‘Network Expansion Zone’. Note: For some habitat networks not all of the habitat components or all the action zones are identified either because the data does not exist or the habitat does not lend itself to identifying particular types of action. Further details are outlined in the Habitat Network Mapping Guidance document. The Network boundary is drawn around the 4 habitat components using a variable buffering process with a generalised distance of 500m although 1km was used for Blanket Bog. As the boundary for each habitat network is tightly drawn around the existing patches of habitat this means that at a national scale the habitat network is composed of a series of smaller ‘networks’ that encapsulates one or more clusters of existing habitat patches. These may be considered as ‘network segments’. The Network Expansion Zone has been drawn around these segments to identify areas where additional action may be undertaken to build greater ecological resilience across the wider landscape. Attribution statement: © Natural England copyright. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right [year].

The Historic Flood Map is a GIS layer showing the maximum extent of individual Recorded Flood Outlines from river, the sea and groundwater springs that meet a set criteria. It shows areas of land that have previously been subject to flooding in England. This excludes flooding from surface water, except in areas where it is impossible to determine whether the source is fluvial or surface water but the dominant source is fluvial.

The majority of records began in 1946 when predecessor bodies to the Environment Agency started collecting detailed information about flooding incidents, although we hold limited details about flooding incidents prior to this date.

If an area is not covered by the Historic Flood Map it does not mean that the area has never flooded, only that we do not currently have records of flooding in this area that meet the criteria for inclusion. It is also possible that the pattern of flooding in this area has changed and that this area would now flood or not flood under different circumstances. Outlines that don’t meet this criteria are stored in the Recorded Flood Outlines dataset.

The Historic Flood Map takes into account the presence of defences, structures, and other infrastructure where they existed at the time of flooding. It will include flood extents that may have been affected by overtopping, breaches or blockages.

Flooding is shown to the land and does not necessarily indicate that properties were flooded internally.