Free Ordnance Survey maps for UK schools, including: 1:50,000 1:25,000 Mastermap

The dataset comprises scanned images of maps and aerial photographs of the Falkland Islands. The original maps are printers films and final paper printed originals of Falkland Islands OS maps, compiled for the Falkland Islands Government and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office by the Overseas Directorate of the Ordnance Survey. The Falkland Islands Government retains copyright interest in the maps. There are no access or usage constraints for BGS staff for BGS purposes. The field slips of geological maps were compiled by BGS under contract to the Falkland Islands Government. Copyright remains with the Falkland Islands Government , but there are no access or usage constraints for BGS staff for BGS purposes. Access to both datasets are restricted to BGS staff.

This dataset is wholly owned by Ordnance Survey (OS) and licenced for use by Natural Resources Wales (NRW) via an open data licence issued by OS. OS open data products (OS OpenData) are a set of free digital maps of Great Britain, available for anyone to use, for any purpose. The maps include data on roads, rivers and boundaries. This dataset includes layers derived from those available from OS.

Natural Resources Wales (NRW) holds copies of Ordnance Survey (OS) basemaps for the whole of Wales, in paper and digital format. NRW obtain much of it's OS data, initially, as part of the Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA) and from 2020 as part of the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA), which is a collective agreement between OS and the government.

This is a map of Worcester in a series of maps of England and Wales, shown at a 1:63,360 or one inch to one statute mile scale. This road map was created by the Great Britain Ordnance Survey.

Colourful and easy to use, Bartholomew’s maps became a trademark series. The maps were popular and influential, especially for recreation, and the series sold well, particularly with cyclists and tourists. To begin with, Bartholomew printed their half-inch maps in Scotland as stand-alone sheets known as 'District Sheets' and by 1886 the whole of Scotland was covered. They then revised the maps into an ordered set of 29 sheets covering Scotland in a regular format. This was first published under the title Bartholomew’s Reduced Ordnance Survey of Scotland. The half-inch maps of Scotland formed the principal content for Bartholomew's Survey Atlas of Scotland published in 1895. Bartholomew then moved south of the Border to the more lucrative but competitive market in England and Wales, whilst continuing to revise the Scottish sheets. The first complete coverage of Great Britain at the half-inch scale was achieved by 1903, and this is the layer shown here.The half-inch maps were distinctive for using different layers of colour to represent landscape relief. A subtle and innovative gradation of colour bands were employed for land at different heights. Lighter greens were used for low ground closest to sea-level, darker greens and browns for higher ground, with white used for mountain tops. Whilst layer colouring had been developed in Germany from the 1860s, Bartholomew's development of it was both innovative and influential. John Bartholomew junior (1831-1893) first used the firm's trademark layer colouring in Baddeley’s Thorough Guide to the English Lake District (1880). His son, John George Bartholomew (1860-1920), later went on to refine the style. You can see Bartholomew’s continued experimentation with layer colour palettes in the Cairngorms layer colour explorer ( http://geo.nls.uk/maps/bartholomew/layers/ )

Bartholomew based their half-inch maps on more detailed Ordnance Survey mapping at one-inch to the mile (1:63,360). The firm had published 'Reduced Ordnance Maps' of Scotland, England and Wales at this scale from the 1890s. These maps were progressively revised and updated with new information. Usually Bartholomew made revisions the sheets right up to the time of publication, so the date of publication is the best guide to the approximate date of the features shown on the map. You can view the dates of publication for the series at:

● Scotland: https://maps.nls.uk/series/bart_half_scotland.html

● England and Wales: https://maps.nls.uk/series/bart_half_england.html

Ordnance Survey ® OpenMap - Local Buildings are polygon features that represent a built entity that includes a roof. This is a generalized building and could be made up of an amalgamation of other buildings and structures.Ordnance Survey ® OpenMap - Local Important Buildings are polygon features that represent buildings that fall within the extent of a functional site across England, Wales and Scotland. Important Buildings are classified into a number of building themes such as:Attraction and Leisure - A feature that provides non-sporting leisure activities for the public. Includes tourist attractions.Air Transport - This theme includes all sites associated with movement of passengers and goods by air, or where aircraft take off and land. Cultural Facility - A feature that is deemed to be of particular interest to societyEducation facility - This theme includes a very broad group of sites with a common high level primary function of providing education (either state funded or by fees).Emergency Services - Emergency services are organizations which ensure public safety and health by addressing different emergencies.Medical Facility - This theme includes sites which focus on the provision of secondary medical care services.Religious Building - A place where members of a religious group congregate for worship.Retail - A feature that sells to the general public finished goods.Road Transport - This theme includes three types of sites: Bus Stations, Coach Stations and Road user services.Sports and Leisure Facility - A feature where many different sports can be played.Water Transport - This theme includes sites involved in the transfer of passengers and or goods onto vessels for transport across water.With OS OpenMap - Local Buildings and Important Buildings you can:Understand your area in detail, including the location of key sites such as schools and hospitals.Share high-quality maps of development proposals to help interested parties to understand their extent and impact.Analyse data in relation to important public buildings, roads, railways, lines and more.Use in conjunction with other layers such as Functional Sites – an area or extent which represents a certain type of function or activity.Present accurate information consistently with other available open data products.The currency of the data is 10/2021

This dataset contains a sample of 10,000 (3.5%) out of a total of 285,846 text sequences extracted from the 1891–1896 Map of London by the Ordnance Survey (OS).

The methodology used for the automated recognition, linking, and sequencing of the text is detailed in the article Recognizing and Sequencing Multi-word Texts in Maps Using an Attentive Pointer by M. Zou et al., 2025.

Description of the content

The map is drawn at a scale of five-feet to the mile (c.a. 1:1,056). The text on the map is an invaluable source of information about the Greater London in the late Victorian period. It includes the names of streets, squares, parks, watercourses and even some estates ('Poplars', 'The Grange', 'Arbutus Lodge'). In addition, the map contains many details of the function of buildings and economic activity, such as factories ('Sweet Factory', 'Crown Linoleum Works', 'Imperial Flour Mills', 'Lion Brewery'), warehouses or commercial infrastructure ('Warehouse', 'Jamaica Wharf', 'Rag Store'), offices ('Offices'), etc. The map also mentions public buildings such as schools ('School Boys, Girls & Infants', 'Sunday School'), hospitals or clinics ('St. Saviour's Union Infirmary', 'Beulah Spa Hydropathic Establishment', 'South Western Fever Hospital'), railway stations ('Clapham Station'), post offices, banks, police stations, etc. Other social venues are also mentioned, such as public houses, i.e. pubs ('P.H.'), clubs, casinos, and recreational areas (e.g. 'Cricket Ground'). Special attention is given to churches, with a regular count of the number of seats (e.g. 'Baptist Chapel Seats for 600').

In addition, the map provides details that can be of great interest in the study of everyday life in London at the end of the 19th century. For example, there are numerous mentions of 'Stables', 'Drinking Fountain's or 'Urinal'[s]. Fire protection infrastructure is highlighted, e.g. fire plugs ('F.P.') and fire alarms ('F.A.'). The map also includes information on elevation (e.g. '11·6') and flood levels (e.g. 'High Water Mark of Ordinary Tides').

A list of abbreviations used in the Ordnance Survey maps, created by Richard Oliver [1], is made available by the National Library of Scotland (link).

Organization of the data

The data in 10k_text_london_OS_1890s.geojson is organized as a regular geojson file.

Example structure

{ "type": "FeatureCollection", "features": [ { "type": "Feature", "geometry": { "type": "MultiPolygon", "coordinates": [[[ [x1, y1], [x2, y2], ...]]] }, "properties": { "label": "Oxford Circus", } },

... # Further text sequences            

] }

Image documents

The original map document consists of 729 separate sheets, digitized, georeferenced, and served as geographic tiles by the National Library of Scotland [2].

Descriptive statistics

Total Number of text sequences: 285,846Sample size: 10,000Total Area covered: 450 square km

Use and Citation

For any mention of this dataset, please cite :

@misc{text_london_OS_1890s, author = {Zou, Mengjie and Petitpierre, R{\'{e}}mi and di Lenardo, Isabella}, title = {{London 1890s Ordnance Survey Text Layer}}, year = {2025}, publisher = {Zenodo}, url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14982946}}@article{recognizing_sequencing_2025, author = {Zou, Mengjie and Dai, Tianhao and Petitpierre, R{\'{e}}mi and Vaienti, Beatrice and di Lenardo, Isabella}, title = {{Recognizing and Sequencing Multi-word Texts in Maps Using an Attentive Pointer}}, year = {2025}}

Corresponding author

Rémi PETITPIERRE - remi.petitpierre@epfl.ch - ORCID - Github - Scholar - ResearchGate

License

This project is licensed under the CC BY 4.0 License.

Liability

We do not assume any liability for the use of this dataset.

References

Oliver R. (2013). Ordnance Survey maps: A concise guide for historians. The Charles Close Society. London, UK. 3rd Ed. 320 pages

Ordnance Survey, London, five feet to the mile, 1893-1896 (1896), https://maps.nls.uk/os/townplans-england/london-1056-1890s.html, digitized by the National Library of Scotland (NLS)

Map, visualise, and truly understand your data at street level. The most detailed street-level open data vector mapping product available, OS Open Map – Local is a great backdrop over which to display and analyse your data.

Quickly identify hotspots in data like crime location or property prices. The muted colours of this detailed backdrop map let your information really stand out. Get greater insights into land use for local planning. OS OpenMap - Local doesn't just pinpoint schools, hospital and other major facilities, it maps the grounds they occupy.

Includes a raster image option, carefully styled in the light of customer feedback. This is easy to load in a GIS and lets you start analysing quicker. Easily get national coverage of Britain at 1:10:000 scale. Download the vector and raster versions of this data as single zip files. if you only need a smaller area, we’ll still offer the single-tile option.

The most detailed open data mapping product available, providing a backdrop for integrating and visualising analytical datasets. The product provides an enhanced level of detail for buildings - including the specific identification of functional sites such as hospitals and schools, and an extensive set of cartographic names optimised for digital styling and presentation.

This is a map of Anglesey in a series of maps of England and Wales, shown at a 1:63,360 or one inch to one statute mile scale. This road map was created by the Great Britain Ordnance Survey.

National Library of Scotland Historic Maps APIHistorical Maps of Great Britain for use in mashups and ArcGIS Onlinehttps://nls.tileserver.com/https://maps.nls.uk/projects/api/index.htmlThis seamless historic map can be:embedded in your own websiteused for research purposesused as a backdrop for your own markers or geographic dataused to create derivative work (such as OpenStreetMap) from it.The mapping is based on out-of-copyright Ordnance Survey maps, dating from the 1920s to the 1940s.The map can be directly opened in a web browser by opening the Internet address: https://nls.tileserver.com/The map is ready for natural zooming and panning with finger pinching and dragging.How to embed the historic map in your websiteThe easiest way of embedding the historical map in your website is to copy < paste this HTML code into your website page. Simple embedding (try: hello.html):You can automatically position the historic map to open at a particular place or postal address by appending the name as a "q" parameter - for example: ?q=edinburgh Embedding with a zoom to a place (try: placename.html):You can automatically position the historic map to open at particular latitude and longitude coordinates: ?lat=51.5&lng=0&zoom=11. There are many ways of obtaining geographic coordinates. Embedding with a zoom to coordinates (try: coordinates.html):The map can also automatically detect the geographic location of the visitor to display the place where you are right now, with ?q=auto Embedding with a zoom to coordinates (try: auto.html):How to use the map in a mashupThe historic map can be used as a background map for your own data. You can place markers on top of it, or implement any functionality you want. We have prepared a simple to use JavaScript API to access to map from the popular APIs like Google Maps API, Microsoft Bing SDK or open-source OpenLayers or KHTML. To use our map in your mashups based on these tools you should include our API in your webpage: ... ...

Working with the Geospatial Commission, the Geo6 organisations have produced a simplified common data catalogue providing core information on the geospatial datasets that they hold and manage. This catalogue or index of data is made available under OGL however, the underlying datasets may be available under different licences.

Geographic Coverage

England, Wales, Scotland

Additional Resources

• BGS

• CA

• HMLR

• OS

• UKHO

• VOA

Link to CSV column definitions

• Human Readable

• JSON schema

Frequency of Update

Bi-annual or sooner, if required.

The dataset comprises maps and aerial photographs of the Falkland Islands. The maps are printers films and final paper printed originals of Falkland Islands OS maps, compiled for the Falkland Islands Government and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office by the Overseas Directorate of the Ordnance Survey. They were discarded by the Ordnance Survey around 2004, and offered to BGS for storage on behalf of the Falkland Islands Government. The Falkland Islands Government retains copyright interest in the maps. There are no access or usage constraints for BGS staff for BGS purposes. The aerial photographs and associated paper overlays represent copies of field slips of geological maps that were compiled by BGS under contract to the Falkland Islands Government. Copyright remains with the Falkland Islands Government , but there are no access or usage constraints for BGS staff for BGS purposes. Access to both datasets are restricted to BGS staff.

To begin with, Bartholomew printed their half-inch maps in Scotland as stand-alone sheets known as 'District Sheets' and by 1886 the whole of Scotland was covered. They then revised the maps into an ordered set of 29 sheets covering Scotland in a regular format. This was first pubilshed under the title Bartholomew’s Reduced Ordnance Survey of Scotland. The half-inch maps formed the principal content for Bartholomew's Survey Atlas of Scotland published in 1895. Bartholomew then moved south of the Border to the more lucrative but competitive market in England and Wales, whilst continuing to revise the Scottish sheets. The first complete coverage of Great Britain at the half-inch scale was achieved by 1903 with 67 individual half-inch sheets. Generally at this time, the English sheets sold three times more quickly, at three times the volume of the Scottish sheets. As for Scotland, Bartholomew used their half-inch sheets of England and Wales in the Survey Atlas of England and Wales published in 1903. From 1901, following a copyright complaint from Ordnance Survey, Bartholomew was forced to drop 'Ordnance' from their map titles. The series was initially renamed 'Bartholomew's Reduced Survey', and by 1903 'Bartholomew's half inch to the mile map'.Bartholomew revised the most popular half-inch sheets every couple of years, ensuring that their maps were more up to date than their main rival, Ordnance Survey. Popular sheets had print runs of several tens of thousands per edition, involving nearly 20 different layer colour plates for hillier areas with more colour.More information: http://geo.nls.uk/maps/bartholomew/great_britain/further_info.html

This dataset comprises 2 collections of maps. The facsmile collection contains all the marginalia information from the original map as well as the map itself, while the georectified collection contains just the map with an associated index for locating them. Each collection comprises approximately 101 000 monochrome images at 6-inch (1:10560) scale. Each image is supplied in .tiff format with appropriate ArcView and MapInfo world files, and shows the topography for all areas of England, Wales and Scotland as either quarter or, in some cases, full sheets. The images will cover the approximate epochs 1880's, 1900's, 1910's, 1920's and 1930's, but note that coverage is not countrywide for each epoch. The data was purchased by BGS from Sitescope, who obtained it from three sources - Royal Geographical Society, Trinity College Dublin and the Ordnance Survey. The data is for internal use by BGS staff on projects, and is available via a customised application created for the network GDI enabling users to search for and load the maps of their choice. The dataset will have many uses across all the geoscientific disciplines across which BGS operates, and should be viewed as a valuable addition to the BGS archive. There has been a considerable amount of work done during 2005, 2006 and 2007 to improve the accuracy of the OS Historic Map Collection. All maps should now be located to +- 50m or better. This is the best that can be achieved cost effectively. There are a number of reasons why the maps are inaccurate. Firstly, the original maps are paper and many are over 100 years old. They have not been stored in perfect condition. The paper has become distorted to varying degrees over time. The maps were therefore not accurate before scanning. Secondly, different generations of maps will have used different surveying methods and different spatial referencing systems. The same geographical object will not necessarily be in the same spatial location on subsequent editions. Thirdly, we are discussing maps, not plans. There will be cartographic generalisations which will affect the spatial representation and location of geographic objects. Finally, the georectification was not done in BGS but by the company from whom we purchased the maps. The company no longer exists. We do not know the methodology used for georectification.

This dataset is published as Open DataAn open dataset of all Unique Street Reference Numbers (USRNs) within OS MasterMap Highways Network, with an associated simplified line geometry representing the geographic extent of each USRN.What OS Open USRN provides you with:Essential identifiers for streetsOur Open USRN product contains USRNs across GB. They are the authoritative identifier assigned to and uniquely identifying streets and are essential for managing Great Britain's Highways. Once its allocated to a street record, a USRN will never change or be reused.Authoritative sourceThe USRNs in OS Open USRN are allocated by Highway or Road Authorities and Highway Bodies, under their statutory responsibility to maintain this information. This means you can have confidence you’re accessing an authoritative source of these identifiers.Complete USRN dataAll USRNs present in OS MasterMap Highways Network, are also included in this product – so you can be sure you’re not missing out.Share and link dataOS Open USRN will enable you to start sharing and linking together information about USRNs which you can visualise with a location.

The data shows Ordnance Survey pond locations, where they match with the surveyed location of a priority habitat pond. The location and attributes of these priority habitat ponds does not currently exists for end users, ecologists, community groups and other stakeholders. The layer will be used to identify, conserve and enhance these features.OS Ponds (taken from the MasterMap Topography layer hydrology>static water) that have a matching pond survey (Clean Water for Wildlife of Priority Ponds) (see data within this folder for these layers) within their geometry, or within 30m of their edge. proximity was created (using NEAR tool) for points and then simplified (to remove 1 to many relationship) and joined to OS polygons using FID unique value. Unnecessary OS fields have been deleted.This data was created using data from Clean Water for Wildlife of Priority Ponds Clean Water for Wildlife - Freshwater Habitats Trust under a CC-BY licence with OS MasterMap data under the PSGA licence.It is published by Natural England under the Non-Commercial Government Licence due to the quantity of OS data contained within it.Full metadata can be viewed on data.gov.uk.

This dataset is published as Open Data.OS Terrain® 50 is an open height dataset of contours with spot heights, breaklines, coastline, lakes, ridges and formlines for Great Britain.What OS Terrain 50 provides you withModel wind direction and lines of sightMake better decisions about where to locate wind turbines and mobile phone masts. OS Terrain 50 lets you model wind direction and lines of sight at your desk, meaning fewer site visits.Plan landscape defencesGet the bigger picture about flood risk, soil erosion and pollution. By showing steep hillside gradients, OS Terrain 50 helps you plan flood defences and safeguard the landscape.More engaging mapsWith the contours version of OS Terrain 50, you can shade in hills to show their height. This extra sense of depth is ideal for walking maps and apps.Surface model entire landscapesGet an accurate, uncluttered view of the terrain with the grid version of OS Terrain 50. Its 50 metre post spacing gives you a surface model of the entire landscape, including major roads, large lakes and estuaries.Take account of tidesThe contours dataset also includes mean high and low water boundaries.

As one of our range of backdrop mapping products, Ordnance Survey's 1:25 000 Scale Colour Raster is backdrop map data of our popular OS Explorer Map series for outdoor activities.

It provides a scanned image of OS Explorer Map that can be used with other data in a geographical information system (GIS) to visualise your own information within a geographical context.