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Mapping the past for the future - Welsh Conference 2024
The document discusses the significance and challenges of historic mapping in Wales, detailing various types of historical maps and their cultural implications. It outlines a methodology for digitizing and making these maps accessible using advanced geospatial technology from Esri. Future projects aim to create a comprehensive historical atlas of Wales and improve access to historical boundary information.
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Mapping the past for the future - Welsh Conference 2024
- 1. Public Mapping the past forthe future Jon Dollery, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Wales
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- 3. Public IntroductiontoRCAHMW CBHC | RCAHMW CollectCurate Communicate
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- 9. Public WhyareHistoricMapsImportant? CBHC | RCAHMW •Historical Boundary Information – (Townships, Manors, Commotes, Cantrefs), all are important to the culture of Wales and surprisingly some still have legal ramifications to this day! • Land Ownership & Tenancy – Linking people with place • Topographical Changes – Explore changes at the micro scale (field boundaries to housing estates) • Historic Land Usage – Legacy of our landscape • Evolution of Placenames – Linking language and place • Transition from rural to urban – Understanding the legacy of industrialisation and the impact that has upon us today
- 10. Public Challenges CBHC | RCAHMW •Thousands of maps from varying periods of history • Spread out across regional, national & international archives • Difficult to access if you don’t know what you’re looking for • Not digitised • Varying survey quality and usefulness How to provide the information they contain in a modern format?
- 11. Public DeepMappingEstateArchives CBHC | RCAHMW Digitisingthe Maps Vectorising the Maps Georeferencing the Maps Making the Maps Publicly Accessible
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- 13. Public TheSolution–EsriArcGISPro&ArcGISOnline CBHC | RCAHMW Theambitious methodology developed by the deep mapping project required several technical geospatial components. Fortunately, all these requirements were fulfilled by Esri.
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- 17. Public TheBenefitsofDeepMapping CBHC | RCAHMW Fullydigitised georeferenced vectorised maps Integrated cadastral mapping in digital format Total data capture depicted on the mapping & marginalia not leaving anything out Data available in a variety of formats and API feeds Cross sector data Used to update other existing datasets
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- 24. Public ThankyouforListening CBHC | RCAHMW JonDollery MA FRGS Swyddog Mapio | Mapping Officer jon.dollery@rcahmw.gov.uk @jrdollery
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Editor's Notes
- #2 Boreda Pawb. Good Morning everyone. Before we start, I’d just like to say think you to Esri UK team for inviting me to speak at this conference. I’ve attended several of these conferences in the past and they are a great opportunity to learn about the fascinating and innovative ways in which GIS is being used across many sectors as well as an opportunity to talk to colleagues and meet new people. It’s great to have the opportunity to talk about the work I’ve been undertaking over the past four years which I hope you may find useful if not fascinating. My name is Jon Dollery, I’m the Mapping Officer at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. I’ve been working for the Commission for over a decade after graduating from University of Wales, Trinity Saint Davids with a BA and MA in Landscape Archaeology. I’m also currently a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. I’ve always been fascinated with landscapes and how they have developed over time and how landscape is the canvas upon which our history and heritage is painted and interwoven. I’ve also always been intrigued with how our landscape has been recorded over various periods though maps and surveys and the information they can tell us about the past. I’m going to spend the next 20 minutes or so exploring a project I worked on called ‘Deep Mapping Estate Archive’s and how this ambitious project created a methodology to bring all of these sources together in one place that was freely available to everyone with the help of GIS, and especially Esri.
- #3 The Royal Commission is one of the Oldest Royal Commission still in existence today. It was founded in 1908 to record the heritage of Wales in the forms of books (more like tomes) called Inventories. These where effectively a list of historical sites that existed in each county and published in the mid 20th century. Since 1908 the way in which we communicate information about the historic environment has changed significantly. Today we have Coflein which is an online database of over a hundred thousand sites ranging from Hillforts to Castles, Shipwrecks to Cinemas. Regarding the historic environment sector, our mission today is the three C’s: Collect: We collect various amounts of information relating to the Historic Environment. This can be through physical topographic survey of known historical sites or discovering new sites though remote sensing such as aerial photography or LiDAR. We also work closely with universities on various research projects. Curate: The Royal Commission holds and immense archive of over 1 million photographs, 33,000 maps and hundreds of thousands of site files and documents which have come from various sources such as the Commission, Cadw, Welsh School of architecture. This is effectively a national archive and is unique as each collection has a spatial context in that they are usually relate to a specific site. Communicate: Our main role is to take the information contained within both the archive and our survey work and tell the story of Wales to the public. We also offer advice on the historic environment sector to Cadw and Welsh Government. We do this though our online presence (Coflein, Historic Battlefields, Historic Placenames) also work with comminates and various groups to give public talks and lectures. One of the new areas in which the Commission is exploring is the information contained within historic mapping that provide information about the rich history and legacy of Wales.
- #4 The map on screen is an example of a 25” map sheet that was surveyed in 1871 and covers the area of southern easter extent of the parish of Tryddyn. The 1st Edition Ordnance Survey mapping is the earliest detailed mapping for all the inhabited regions of the UK. All towns, villages and cultivated rural areas were mapped with only mountainous areas not surveyed. They were surveyed to a scale of 25 inch to the mile (1:2500). It is the most detailed, complete earliest mapping we have for the UK (only areas that had a population of more than 4000 was surveyed in greater detail). The maps detail practically every feature in the landscape to be shown. They provide good detail of all buildings, streets, railways, industrial premises, parkland, farms, woodland, and rivers. Their bold style and attractive, informative, hand-colouring allow easy interpretation for a wide range of uses. Initially books of reference were created for the 1st Edition maps which included information to do with the land use and acreage. however, only some counties were done in this way as the decision was taken to only include the acreages to be put onto the map. Flintshire was one of the counties that where fortunate to have a book of reference. Because of the coverage, scale and detail of these maps, they are frequently used that the base map for landscape analysis. The process of Retrogressive analysis uses maps from various epoch in history to look at how the landscape has changed. By using these maps as a primary base map, you can map much older sources from them. [Ani 1] This is a zoomed in view of the area to the southeast and shows the course of Offa’s Dyke. As you can see mining to the northwest has obliterated this part of the Dyke. [Ani 2] This is a page from the Tryddyn book of reference.
- #5 This map is a sheet from the Mold Town Plan which was surveyed in 1871. The Ordnance Survey town plans were done in conjunction with the 25” mapping between 1868 and 1889. They were drawn to a scale of 10.56 Feet to a Mile (1:500) and was the most detailed topographic mapping to have been done within the mainland UK at the time. These large scale town plans where created for 400 towns in the UK. The towns that were chosen where any town that had a population greater that 4000 residents. One of the main driving factors for the creation of these maps was the Cholera and Typhus epidemics of the 1830’s as the high detailed mapping could be used to help identify areas that needed sanitary improvements. The amount of detail shown on these maps is phenomenal. They not only record the footprints and extents of each building, but also the street furniture, pavements, garden features. Even each major tree was surveyed and plotted accurately! Again, these maps make for an excellent base map, but because only towns where surveyed, their usage is very limited to those urban areas. The image on the left is a close-up view of the map focusing on the buildings. As you can see the detail on these maps in comprehensive as well as impressive.
- #6 The maps below are of the Tryddyn Tithe Map that was surveyed in 1839. Tithes where payments to support the local church from landowners and tenants. The tradition of making tithe payments goes back to the medieval period and usually consisted of one tenth of produce. Historically these payments would be in the form of goods (grain, vegetables, livestock, fish, wool etc). However, in 1836 the Tithe Commutation Act replaced the in-kind payments to monetary payments. As part of this act, to help evaluate the cost for what each landowner and tenant needed to pay in the form of Tithe tax, maps for each parish where drawn and each land parcel that was subject to Tithe was surveyed. Tithe commissioners where responsible for creating maps for each parish for England and Wales. These maps are invaluable as they do cover a large areas. Most parishes in England and Wales have a tithe map, usually this would be a map to one parish, however sometimes the maps were done by township rather than by parish. However, they only focus on areas that where tithable, and features such as buildings although surveyed, are more representation rather than actual footprints. They are also a fantastic snapshot of the landscape in the period they were surveyed. However, because each map was done parish by parish, there are inconsistencies in the records (some record land use, some don’t). Because they were surveyed in isolation from one another, the parish boundaries don’t always line up! [Ani 1] here is a copy of the apportionment document. As you can see the ‘State of Cultivation’ i.e. land use for this tithe map is empty. [Ani 2] this is the Tithe map for Llanferres and as you can see it is in a relatively poor condition.
- #7 The map below is the Enclosure Award for the Parish of Llandegla, Denbighshire that was surveyed in 1830. In the medieval period a large proportion of the land was categorised as ‘Common’ or ‘Waste’. Common land was under the control of the local lord but rights such as pasture were given to local peasantry. Waste on the other hand was land that was without value, i.e. in narrow areas or awkward locations such as cliff edges or contained rocky outcrops. However, by the 19th century a succession of acts of enclosure were passed to divide this land up into smaller parcels, usually to the benefit of the local gentry. In 1786 there where 250,000 independent landowners within the UK, but by 1816 there where only 32,000. As part of the process, meetings where held, that were supposed to be public but often took place in private with landowners in attendance, who themselves would choose their own solicitors, surveyors and commissioners. Maps were created to plan the division of unenclosed land (mainly in upland areas). These maps are important as they are effectively 3 maps in one. The first detailing what was planned, although it is worth remembering that sometimes not all planed enclosures were implemented in reality. Secondly, they show features and parcels that existed prior to the enclosure. Lastly, if you remove the planned enclosures, you get a view of the unenclosed land as it would have been prior to the act of enclosure. In a majority of cases, this land apart from some encroachments, would have remained unchanged since the medieval period! Many of the Enclosure maps for Flintshire and Denbighshire can be accessed on the Northeast Wales Archives website The image to the left of the screen shows some further detail of the main map. As you can see the map details solid boundaries which where extant when the map was surveyed. The dashed lines on the map show how the unenclosed land was to be divided. You can also see that features such as roads were also planned out.
- #8 The images on screen come from the estate map of Nerquis Hall and was surveyed in 1734 Estate maps are probably some of the oldest and rarest surveyed mapping that we have within the UK. Estate maps can range in date from the late 17th century though to the late 19th century. May are drawn with different scales, views and orientations. Usually, these maps were produced by hired surveyors and draftsmen who would be financed by a local landowner to survey their lands and compile them into a series of maps. These could range from massive parchment maps to be mounted within the home or as a series of small maps to be incorporated into a folio. As these maps are less frequent and depending on the size of the estate, substantial their coverage is sporadic, compared to the other examples. That is not to say however, that maps from different estates and different periods do not match up. This maps shows the lands of Edward Williams of Nerquis Hall which expanded across Nerquis, Tryddyn, Leeswood and Mold. As you can see these maps have a wealth of information and some like this example also include elevation drawings of properties.
- #9 Historical maps are a fascinating source of information. We can learn so many interesting and important things from them such as: [Ani 1] Historical Boundary Information. Old and ancient boundaries such as Townships, Manors, Commotes and Cantrefs are all important to the culture and history of Wales. Even more surprisingly, some of these ancient boundaries still have legal ramifications to this day. Manors for instance are particularly important as although many of the rights of manorial area were disbanded in 1925, mineral rights and sporting rights still hold legal standing to this day. [Ani 2] Topographical changes. From looking and comparing old maps with the present we can see what has changed in the landscape. We can see how field boundaries may have changed or wholescale areas being developed from cultivated land to modern housing estates. [Ani 3] Land Ownership and Tenancy. Put simply we can link historical people to places where they lived and interacted with. [Ani 4] Historic Land Usage. Many of these maps have information relating to how specific pieces of land were used at the time the map was surveyed. This gives us unprecedented insights into how the landscape of the past was managed many maintained by our ancestors. [Ani 5] Evolution of Placenames. Again, all these historical sources contain a wealth of place and field names, many of which are no longer in use today. Many of these maps mark the point at which old names go out of use and are extremely important as many of these old names can be found in much older documents such as medieval charters and opens up our understanding of the landscape to much further remote periods of history. [Ani 6] Transition from Rural to Urban. Many of these maps are surveyed from the start of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Britian was one of the first counties in the world to industrialise and is one of the first nations in the world today to de-industrialise. Understanding the legacy of this transformation is important to understand especially within the context of today and our change to becoming a greener and environmentally sustainable nation.
- #10 There are many challenges with historic mapping as it currently exists. [Ani 1] There are tens of thousands of maps from varying periods of history. For this project alone in a very small area in Northeast Wales we had an enormous number of maps with the earliest dating back to 1620. [Ani 2] Although there may be numerous maps, they all vary in survey quality and usefulness. This can only be ascertained however by examining each map to validate their merits. [Ani 3] All of these fantastic resources are scattered to the four winds. They are held in regional, national and even international archives and institutions, not to mention private collections and existing landed estates. [Ani 4] Many of these maps can be extremely difficult to access. Not necessarily due to its location, but how these maps have been deposited and catalogued can be a challenge to decipher. You almost need to know what you're looking for before you can find it, and with the sheer volume of maps, this can be very problematic. [Ani 5] Almost all of these maps are undigitized. They are all physical paper-based (velum if it's really old) maps. In today’s world were the expectation of data and information being available on demand, these collections are starting to become severely overlooked. [Ani 6] With all this in mind, the key challenge appears to be ‘how can we provide all the information these sources contain in a modern digital format that is easily accessible and open to everyone?’. This means effectively the creation of vector data that can be used to record as much information as needed, which in turn is compliant with modern data standards and can be accessed through the lasted data sharing technologies such as API feeds.
- #11 To help resolve these challenges the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded the ‘Deep Mapping Estate Archives’ project. This pilot project ran between 2022 and 2022 and was a collaboration between the Commission and Bangor University and worked in partnership with the National Library of Wales and Northeast Wales Archive Service. The pilot focused on a small area in Northeast Wales, centred around the historical county border between Flintshire and Denbighshire. This included the parishes of Llanarmon, Llanferres and Llandegla in Denbighshire and the large parish of Mold in Flintshire (as far as the river Alyn). This was roughly an area of around 125 square kilometres. This area was chosen as it has a good mix of landscape types (upland, lowland, rural as well as the small urban setting of the Town of Mold). It also historically possessed a number of small landed estates for which there was a good representation of material in the form of historical maps. The project was set up to address 4 main issues centred around historical mapping: [Ani 1] Digitising the maps [Ani 2] Georeferencing the maps [Ani 3] Vectorising the maps [Ani 4] Making these maps publicly accessible.
- #12 To help combat these challenges, a methodology was created. The name ‘Total Digitisation’ was aptly chosen as it best described the approach. In short, the idea was to record as much information about these maps and not leave anything out. Once of the driving factors behind this approach was from looking at prior landscape projects. Many projects in the past which have used historical mapping have usually tended to focus upon one element or specific feature type, Churches for example. This is usually because their funding has been predicated on a research questions which can be very focused and narrow in its scope and complexity. All the time and effort is spend recording these specific details form the maps to answer one specific question while ignoring everything else. This approach flips that presumption on its head. By not being led by a narrow research question this approach allows for everything to be captured both within the maps as well as accompanying ancillary documentation such as books of reference or schedules. The methodology can be broken down into five simple elements. Finding the maps. This is integral stage to know the extent of the maps that exist for any given and crucially knowing where this material is. Digitisation. This is the scanning of the maps. For the Deep Mapping Project, all of the scanning was undertaken by the National Library of Wales as they have state-of-the-art digitisation facilities and specialise in scanning archival documents of various shapes and sizes. Georeferencing. Once the maps had been scanned the next stage is to link these maps to the modern day. This is achieved though georeferencing. However, the method of georeferencing used here is much more detailed that what has been used in the past. Historically, old maps have been georeferenced using 4-point corner georeferencing. The method Deep Mapping implemented was multipoint georeferencing (150-500 control points per map). Vectorisation. Once you have made your historical map align as closely as possible to its modern counterpart, the next stage is to create polygonal datasets that reflect the historical map. Rather than creating these from hand and relying solely on the survey of the original map, it is much better to take and existing polygonal dataset and alter that to reflect the historical source. OS MasterMap is the perfect candidate as it is the standard base mapping most authorative mapping information is based off. Public access. Once all this information has been created, the next step is to make this as open and available to everyone.
- #13 The creation of the methodology was a logical process; however, its implementation was more of a challenge. Fortunately, many if not all of the challenges we were facing could be met by using Esri products such as ArcGIS pro and ArcGIS online.
- #14 The Royal Commission has always used Esri’s GIS products. When I started in 2012, we were primarily using ArcMap however in recent years we have moved to ArcGIS Pro our main GIS interface. ArcGIS Pro provides much of the functionality we need daily, but also has a myriad of tools which were extremely useful for the Deep Mapping project. One of the key tools was ArcGIS Pro’s georeferencing tool. This easy to use built in feature allowed us to import all the digitised historical maps into the GIS and overlay them onto modern topography. To get the best georeferenced match we used Ordnance Survey MasterMap to anchor our control points too. These tended to be corners of buildings or edges of fields that existed on the historical map and still exist today. The snap too feature within the Georeference tool was also an additional bonus as we could snap to the right vertices within MasterMap for additional accuracy. We implemented multipoint georeferencing and averaged 150-500 control points per map, depending upon the complexity of topographical features. It's easier to georeference a rural landscape than it is an urban! Another great feature within the georeferencing tool is the different transformations that can be applied. For this project we used the ‘Spline’ transformation which allows for greater accuracy though distorting and warping the map. However, the more control points, the more accurate the georeferencing. ArcGIS Pro was also instrumental in the vectorisation of the historical maps. To achieve this, once the maps had been georeferenced as accurately as possible, we would take an extract of modern Ordnance Survey MasterMap and alter it to reflect the historical source. This was achieved by manually splitting or merging polygons. The attribute table of the dataset would be configured to capture all of the information contained within the map, marginalia or any other associated source such as a book of reference.
- #15 Esri’s ArcGIS online was a game changer for the project. The biggest issue we faced from the outset of the project was how where we going to collate and present of all of this information to the public? Fortunately, ArcGIS Online came to our rescue as it not only allowed us to upload and host both the digital images (raster) but also the vector data.
- #16 At this point of the presentation, I would just like to run you through a quick demonstration of the deep mapping web site and web mapping to give you a sense of the scale of what we have been able to achieve.
- #17 Benefits include: Fully digitsed, georeferenced vectorised maps Integrated cadastral mapping in a digital format Total data capture (everything depicted on the mapping an marginalia has been recorded and nothing is missed out). Data is available in variety of formats including API feeds to be imported directly into a GIS. This data is useful across many sectors such as heritage, natural and managed environment, planning, ecology, etc.
- #18 The ‘Deep Mapping’ project came to an end in 2022, however the methodological approaches developed as part of that project have continued into more recent work. For this last section I want to show you some of the other projects have have come out of the legacy of the deep mapping project.
- #19 The Historical boundaries of Wales website launched earlier last month. Since January 2024, the Commission has been vectorising all of the historical boundaries of Wales that are depicted on the 1st Edition 6” Ordnance Survey mapping. This is the first step in creating an online resource exploring the many historical boundaries that have existed in Wales from the medieval period to the present day. This has been done in partnership with the National Library of Scotland following work being undertaken by Bristol University: Mapping the March of England and Wales. Using the method pioneered by the deep mapping project, all of the boundaries have been mapped from 6” OS mapping which was kindly provided to us via the National Library of Scotland. OS MasterMap was the template used from which the boundaries were traced from making a modern digital dataset that reflects the historical boundaries as they existed over 140 years ago. The web map interfaces have been built using Esri ArcGIS Online Experience Builder and integrates both 2D and 3D web mapping.
- #20 The Historical boundaries of Wales website launched earlier last month. Since January 2024, the Commission has been vectorising all of the historical boundaries of Wales that are depicted on the 1st Edition 6” Ordnance Survey mapping. This is the first step in creating an online resource exploring the many historical boundaries that have existed in Wales from the medieval period to the present day. This has been done in partnership with the National Library of Scotland following work being undertaken by Bristol University: Mapping the March of England and Wales. Using the method pioneered by the deep mapping project, all of the boundaries have been mapped from 6” OS mapping which was kindly provided to us via the National Library of Scotland. OS MasterMap was the template used from which the boundaries were traced from making a modern digital dataset that reflects the historical boundaries as they existed over 140 years ago. The web map interfaces have been built using Esri ArcGIS Online Experience Builder and integrates both 2D and 3D web mapping.
- #22 The historical Atlas of Anglesey is a pilot project primarily to test how successful the methodology created for the Deep Mapping project could be upscaled to larger regions, in this instance at a county level. This primarily centred on the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey mapping which for the first time has been digitised, accurate georeferenced and made freely available to the public. This has created a solid geospatial framework from which other historical maps can also be imported as demonstrated by the deep mapping project. This small pilot was undertaken by the Commission working in partnership with Anglesey Archives and the National Library of Wales. This web map has been building using ArcGIS Instant Apps as we wanted to test how quickly we could develop a easy to use web interface. Please use the QR code to have a play with the mapping.
- #23 In 2022 the project received the Ordnance Survey award from the British Cartographic Society for innovative use of OS data. This project and its methodology have been the catalyst for further projects and has led to discussions and collaborations with many institutions within the UK as well as Europe. We have worked with the Fryske Academy (Dutch Royal Academy of Science) to help migrate their historical GIS project to an Esri ArcGIS online platform. If adopted more widely, the methodology developed by this project has the potential to put Wales at the centre of digital humanities development in Europe.
- #24 Thank you all for listening. I hope you have found this presentation useful. I’m afraid I don’t think I have time for questions, however, please do find me during lunch or at the break to ask me anything about any of the work I’ve discussed here or if your interested to learn more about the work of the Commission. Enjoy the rest of the conference. Diolch yn fawr.