How would you define the boundaries of a town or city in England and Wales in 2016?

Maybe your definition would be based on its population size, geographic extent or where the industry and services are located. This was a question the ONS had to consider when creating a new statistical geography called Towns and Cities.

In reality, the ability to delimit the boundaries of a city or town is difficult!

Major Towns and Cities

The new statistical geography, Towns and Cities has been created based on population size and the extent of the built environment. It contains 112 towns and cities in England and Wales, where the residential and/or workday population > 75,000 people at the 2011 Census. It has been constructed using the existing Built-Up Area boundary set produced by Ordnance Survey in 2011.

This swipe map shows where the towns and cities and built-up areas are different. Just swipe the bar from left to right.

The blue polygons are the towns and cities and the purple polygons are the built-up areas.

The Access Network Map of England is a national composite dataset of Access layers, showing analysis of extent of Access provision for each Lower Super Output Area (LSOA), as a percentage or area coverage of access in England. The ‘Access Network Map’ was developed by Natural England to inform its work to improve opportunities for people to enjoy the natural environment. This map shows, across England, the relative abundance of accessible land in relation to where people live. Due to issues explained below, the map does not, and cannot, provide a definitive statement of where intervention is necessary. Rather, it should be used to identify areas of interest which require further exploration. Natural England believes that places where people can enjoy the natural environment should be improved and created where they are most wanted. Access Network Maps help support this work by providing means to assess the amount of accessible land available in relation to where people live. They combine all the available good quality data on access provision into a single dataset and relate this to population. This provides a common foundation for regional and national teams to use when targeting resources to improve public access to greenspace, or projects that rely on this resource. The Access Network Maps are compiled from the datasets available to Natural England which contain robust, nationally consistent data on land and routes that are normally available to the public and are free of charge. Datasets contained in the aggregated data:•
Agri-environment scheme permissive access (routes and open access)•
CROW access land (including registered common land and Section 16)•
Country Parks•
Cycleways (Sustrans Routes) including Local/Regional/National and Link Routes•
Doorstep Greens•
Local Nature Reserves•
Millennium Greens•
National Nature Reserves (accessible sites only)•
National Trails•
Public Rights of Way•
Forestry Commission ‘Woods for People’ data•
Village Greens – point data only Due to the quantity and complexity of data used, it is not possible to display clearly on a single map the precise boundary of accessible land for all areas. We therefore selected a unit which would be clearly visible at a variety of scales and calculated the total area (in hectares) of accessible land in each. The units we selected are ‘Lower Super Output Areas’ (LSOAs), which represent where approximately 1,500 people live based on postcode. To calculate the total area of accessible land for each we gave the linear routes a notional width of 3 metres so they could be measured in hectares. We then combined together all the datasets and calculated the total hectares of accessible land in each LSOA. For further information about this data see the following links:Access Network Mapping GuidanceAccess Network Mapping Metadata Full metadata can be viewed on data.gov.uk.

A Special Area of Conservation (SAC) is the land designated under Directive 92/43/EEC on the Conservation of Natural Habitats and of Wild Fauna and Flora. Data supplied has the status of "Candidate". The data does not include "Possible" Sites. Boundaries are mapped against Ordnance Survey MasterMap.Full metadata can be viewed on data.gov.uk.

A PDF map that shows the Regions in England, as at December 2017. (File Size - 226 KB)

Important Note: This item is in mature support as of July 2021. A new version of this item is available for your use. Esri recommends updating your maps and apps to use the new version.This map is designed to be used as a general reference map for informational and educational purposes as well as a basemap by GIS professionals and other users for creating web maps and web mapping applications.The map was developed by National Geographic and Esri and reflects the distinctive National Geographic cartographic style in a multi-scale reference map of the world. The map was authored using data from a variety of leading data providers, including Garmin, HERE, UNEP-WCMC, NASA, ESA, USGS, and others.This reference map includes administrative boundaries, cities, protected areas, highways, roads, railways, water features, buildings and landmarks, overlaid on shaded relief and land cover imagery for added context. The map includes global coverage down to ~1:144k scale and more detailed coverage for North America down to ~1:9k scale.Map Note: Although small-scale boundaries, place names and map notes were provided and edited by National Geographic, boundaries and names shown do not necessarily reflect the map policy of the National Geographic Society, particularly at larger scales where content has not been thoroughly reviewed or edited by National Geographic.Data Notes: The credits below include a list of data providers used to develop the map. Below are a few additional notes:Reference Data: National Geographic, Esri, Garmin, HERE, iPC, NRCAN, METILand Cover Imagery: NASA Blue Marble, ESA GlobCover 2009 (Copyright notice: © ESA 2010 and UCLouvain)Protected Areas: IUCN and UNEP-WCMC (2011), The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) Annual Release. Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC. Available at:www.protectedplanet.net.Ocean Data: GEBCO, NOAA

This layer of the GeoIndex shows the availability of 1:25000 scale Classical Areas Geological Maps. The maps themselves show the occurrence, nature and stratigraphic age of rocks. They are available for selected areas of outstanding geological interest in the United Kingdom, and in a number of versions (Solid, or Solid and Drift combined, Bedrock or Superficial). Maps are normally available in both flat and folded format. 1:25000 scale maps are also available for the Channel Islands. To order maps, take note of the map name and use the BGS Internet Shop.

A PDF map that shows the local authority districts, counties and unitary authorities in the United Kingdom as at April 2021. The map has been created to show the United Kingdom from country level down to local authority district level. (File Size - 1,969 KB)

PLEASE NOTE: This data product is not available in Shapefile format or KML at https://naturalengland-defra.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/Defra::living-england-habitat-map-phase-4/about, as the data exceeds the limits of these formats. Please select an alternative download format.This data product is also available for download in multiple formats via the Defra Data Services Platform at https://environment.data.gov.uk/explore/4aa716ce-f6af-454c-8ba2-833ebc1bde96?download=true.The Living England project, led by Natural England, is a multi-year programme delivering a satellite-derived national habitat layer in support of the Environmental Land Management (ELM) System and the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) Pilot. The project uses a machine learning approach to image classification, developed under the Defra Living Maps project (SD1705 – Kilcoyne et al., 2017). The method first clusters homogeneous areas of habitat into segments, then assigns each segment to a defined list of habitat classes using Random Forest (a machine learning algorithm). The habitat probability map displays modelled likely broad habitat classifications, trained on field surveys and earth observation data from 2021 as well as historic data layers. This map is an output from Phase IV of the Living England project, with future work in Phase V (2022-23) intending to standardise the methodology and Phase VI (2023-24) to implement the agreed standardised methods.The Living England habitat probability map will provide high-accuracy, spatially consistent data for a range of Defra policy delivery needs (e.g. 25YEP indicators and Environment Bill target reporting Natural capital accounting, Nature Strategy, ELM) as well as external users. As a probability map, it allows the extrapolation of data to areas that we do not have data. These data will also support better local and national decision making, policy development and evaluation, especially in areas where other forms of evidence are unavailable. Process Description: A number of data layers are used to inform the model to provide a habitat probability map of England. The main sources layers are Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 satellite data from the ESA Copericus programme. Additional datasets were incorporated into the model (as detailed below) to aid the segmentation and classification of specific habitat classes. Datasets used:Agri-Environment Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) Monitoring, British Geological Survey Bedrock Mapping 1:50k, Coastal Dune Geomatics Mapping Ground Truthing, Crop Map of England (RPA), Dark Peak Bog State Survey, Desktop Validation and Manual Points, EA Integrated Height Model 10m, EA Saltmarsh Zonation and Extent, Field Unit NEFU, Living England Collector App NEFU/EES, Long Term Monitoring Network (LTMN), Lowland Heathland Survey, National Forest Inventory (NFI), National Grassland Survey, National Plant Monitoring Scheme, NEFU Surveys, Northumberland Border Mires, OS Vector Map District , Priority Habitats Inventory (PHI) B Button, European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 , Space2 Eye Lens: Ainsdale NNR, Space2 Eye Lens: State of the Bog Bowland Survey, Space2 Eye Lens: State of the Bog Dark Peak Condition Survey, Space2 Eye Lens: State of the Bog (MMU) Mountain Hare Habitat Survey Dark Peak, Uplands Inventory, West Pennines Designation NVC Survey, Wetland Inventories, WorldClim - Global Climate DataFull metadata can be viewed on data.gov.uk.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/images/osm_logo.png" alt="" /> OpenStreetMap (openstreetmap.org) is a global collaborative mapping project, which offers maps and map data released with an open license, encouraging free re-use and re-distribution. The data is created by a large community of volunteers who use a variety of simple on-the-ground surveying techniques, and wiki-syle editing tools to collaborate as they create the maps, in a process which is open to everyone. The project originated in London, and an active community of mappers and developers are based here. Mapping work in London is ongoing (and you can help!) but the coverage is already good enough for many uses.

Browse the map of London on OpenStreetMap.org

Downloads:

The whole of England updated daily:

• england.osm.bz2 ~185M - .osm formatted raw XML data (compressed)
• england.shp.zip ~156M - ESRI shapefiles

For more details of downloads available from OpenStreetMap, including downloading the whole planet, see 'planet.osm' on the wiki.

Data access APIs:

Download small areas of the map by bounding-box. For example this URL requests the data around Trafalgar Square:
http://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/map?bbox=-0.13062,51.5065,-0.12557,51.50969

Data filtered by "tag". For example this URL returns all elements in London tagged shop=supermarket:
http://www.informationfreeway.org/api/0.6/*[shop=supermarket][bbox=-0.48,51.30,0.21,51.70]

The .osm format

The format of the data is a raw XML represention of all the elements making up the map. OpenStreetMap is composed of interconnected "nodes" and "ways" (and sometimes "relations") each with a set of name=value pairs called "tags". These classify and describe properties of the elements, and ultimately influence how they get drawn on the map. To understand more about tags, and different ways of working with this data format refer to the following pages on the OpenStreetMap wiki.

• .osm - About the raw XML data format of OpenStreetMap
• Downloading data - More details of the API and extract download options
• Xapi - The extended api for filtering by tag
• Map Features - A list of tags, and what map features they represent
• Converting map data between formats - catalogue of tools for converting from .osm to other formats

Simple embedded maps

Rather than working with raw map data, you may prefer to embed maps from OpenStreetMap on your website with a simple bit of javascript. You can also present overlays of other data, in a manner very similar to working with google maps. In fact you can even use the google maps API to do this. See OSM on your own website for details and links to various javascript map libraries.

Help build the map!

The OpenStreetMap project aims to attract large numbers of contributors who all chip in a little bit to help build the map. Although the map editing tools take a little while to learn, they are designed to be as simple as possible, so that everyone can get involved. This project offers an exciting means of allowing local London communities to take ownership of their part of the map.

Read about how to Get Involved and see the London page for details of OpenStreetMap community events.

A PDF map that shows the health areas in England and Wales as at April 2021. The map shows the health geographies: clinical commissioning groups that became operative in England as at April 2021 and the local health boards that became operative in Wales as at April 2019. (File Size - 1,004 KB)

The Living England project, led by Natural England, is a multi-year programme delivering a satellite-derived national habitat layer in support of the Environmental Land Management (ELM) System and the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) Pilot. The project uses a machine learning approach to image classification, developed under the Defra Living Maps project (SD1705 – Kilcoyne et al., 2017). The method first clusters homogeneous areas of habitat into segments, then assigns each segment to a defined list of habitat classes using Random Forest (a machine learning algorithm). The habitat probability map displays modelled likely broad habitat classifications, trained on field surveys and earth observation data from 2021 as well as historic data layers. This map is an output from Phase IV of the Living England project, with future work in Phase V (2022-23) intending to standardise the methodology and Phase VI (2023-24) to implement the agreed standardised methods.

The Living England habitat probability map will provide high-accuracy, spatially consistent data for a range of Defra policy delivery needs (e.g. 25YEP indicators and Environment Bill target reporting Natural capital accounting, Nature Strategy, ELM) as well as external users. As a probability map, it allows the extrapolation of data to areas that we do not have data. These data will also support better local and national decision making, policy development and evaluation, especially in areas where other forms of evidence are unavailable.

Process Description: A number of data layers are used to inform the model to provide a habitat probability map of England. The main sources layers are Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 satellite data from the ESA Copericus programme. Additional datasets were incorporated into the model (as detailed below) to aid the segmentation and classification of specific habitat classes.

Datasets used: Agri-Environment Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) Monitoring, British Geological Survey Bedrock Mapping 1:50k, Coastal Dune Geomatics Mapping Ground Truthing, Crop Map of England (RPA), Dark Peak Bog State Survey, Desktop Validation and Manual Points, EA Integrated Height Model 10m, EA Saltmarsh Zonation and Extent, Field Unit NEFU, Living England Collector App NEFU/EES, Long Term Monitoring Network (LTMN), Lowland Heathland Survey, National Forest Inventory (NFI), National Grassland Survey, National Plant Monitoring Scheme, NEFU Surveys, Northumberland Border Mires, OS Vector Map District , Priority Habitats Inventory (PHI) B Button, European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 , Space2 Eye Lens: Ainsdale NNR, Space2 Eye Lens: State of the Bog Bowland Survey, Space2 Eye Lens: State of the Bog Dark Peak Condition Survey, Space2 Eye Lens: State of the Bog (MMU) Mountain Hare Habitat Survey Dark Peak, Uplands Inventory, West Pennines Designation NVC Survey, Wetland Inventories, WorldClim - Global Climate Data

A PDF map showing the travel to work areas (TTWAs) in the United Kingdom as at December 2011. (File Size - 3 MB)

Coal resource maps for the whole of the UK have been produced by the British Geological Survey as a result of joint work with Department of Trade and Industry and the Coal Authority. The Coal Resources Map is a Map of Britain depicting the spatial extent of the principal coal resources. The map shows the areas where coal and lignite are present at the surface and also where coal is buried at depth beneath younger rocks. The maps are intended to be used for resource development, energy policy, strategic planning, land-use planning, the indication of hazard in mined areas, environment assessment and as a teaching aid. In addition to a general map of coal resources for Britain data also exists for the six inset maps: Scotland; North-East; North-West; East Pennines; Lancashire, North Wales and the West Midlands; South Wales, Forest of Dean and Bristol. Available as a paper map, flat or folded, from BGS Sales or as a pdf on a CD if requested.

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.
Main Topics:

The digitised maps cover the whole of England and Wales, and are organised by Ordnance Survey Sheet number. The maps contain a scanned bitmap image of the Ordnance Survey one inch to one mile (1:63,360) New Popular Edition maps (1945-8) with National Grid. They contain the boundaries of some 18,233 places, and are arranged as three electronic 'layers'. The first is a scan of the Ordnance Survey maps stored as grey tone sheet images. This enables Ordnance Survey physical, cultural and place-name content to be readily visible in the background for orientation and general location purposes, while not obscuring the added boundary and reference number material. The second layer consists of the boundaries, stored as solid red lines; and the third layer contains the reference numbers that link places on the map to the gazetteer/metadata dataset that accompanies the maps.

The maps are available on CD-ROM in Adobe Illustrator (ISBN:0-9540032-2-5) or Adobe Acrobat (ISBN:0-9540032-1-7) PDF formats. We recommend using the Adobe Illustrator format if you already have the software (as it enables you to edit the maps and select the layers to view). However, the Adobe Acrobat PDF format is perfectly suitable for viewing the maps, and we will supply the necessary reader software.

An accompanying book Historic Parishes of England and Wales: An Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and Metadata by Roger Kain and Richard Oliver (ISBN:0-9540032-0-9) provides an introduction to the provenance of the maps. It also includes an abbreviated version of the gazetteer/metadata dataset, and a discussion of historical boundaries.

This unique combination publication is set to become a standard reference resource and is an invaluable tool for all those interested in plotting local area-based data from the past (population, agricultural, statistics, tax data etc.) from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

A PDF map showing the lower layer super output areas in the East of England Region of England as at December 2011. (File Size - 27 MB)

A series of maps at the detailed scale of 1:25 000 have been produced for areas of outstanding geological interest in Great Britain. Some maps are accompanied by explanatory booklets. The maps were published between 1954 and 2007. About 60 maps have been published, some showing solid geology, some drift geology and some combined solid and drift. Most of the maps include geological cross sections and generalised vertical sections. 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 dataset provides a 1km resolution raster (gridded) coverage of wooded areas in riparian zones (river- or streamsides) across Great Britain. The areas classified as riparian in this dataset are defined by a 50 metre buffer applied to the CEH 1:50000 watercourse network. Wooded areas within this zone are identified as those classified by the Land Cover Map of Great Britain 2007 as either coniferous or deciduous woodland. The data are aggregated to a 1km resolution.

A collection of hydrogeological maps created by the British Geological Survey between 1967 and 1994. The maps in the collection cover aspects of groundwater availability, exploitation and quality and were published at various scales from 1:25 000 to 1:625 000 A hydrogeological map is a specialized type of map that illustrates the distribution and characteristics of hydrogeological features in a particular area. Hydrogeological maps of the UK provide information on major aquifers, including geological and lithological information, surface drainage systems and water quality issues. The 23 maps show information on surface water features, the three dimensional geometry of aquifers, groundwater levels, abstractions and quality including saline intrusion in varying amounts of detail. They range in scale from 1:625 000, for the national map of the hydrogeology of England and Wales, down to 1:25 000 for some of the smaller regional maps. These maps are important tools for understanding and managing groundwater resources, as well as for addressing water-related environmental issues. 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 where aquifer vulnerability maps are available for England and Wales. These maps identify areas in which the groundwater resources require protection from potentially polluting activities. The maps are designed to be used by planners, developers, consultants and regulatory bodies to ensure that developments conform to the Policy and Practice of the Environment Agency for the protection of Groundwater. The Soil Survey, Land Research Centre and the British Geological Survey were commissioned by the Environment Agency to prepare 53 groundwater vulnerability maps at 1:100,000 scale. Currently we are unable to provide scanned copies of these maps due to Copyright restrictions. Please note that these maps are based on data from the late 1980's and early 1990's. More up-to-date digital data may now be available from the Environment Agency.