It’s midway through October, so before the working day get too short to make it worthwhile, why not grab your compass and hiking boots, shrug on your waterproofed and take to the hills. Opportunities are, if you’re a regular baby-walker, you will stride out safe in the knowledge that an Ordnance Survey map secreted about your person means you’ll know exactly where and when you got lost.
The history of the organisation known as OS is not solely that of a group of earnest blokes with a penchant for triangulation and an ever-present soundtrack of rustling cagoules.
From its roots in military strategy to its current incarnation as producer of the rambler’s navigational aid, the government-owned corporation has been checking and rechecking all 243,241 sq km( 93,916 sq miles) of Great Britain for 227 times. Here are some of the more peculiar elements in the past of the famous map-makers.
Battles and bloodshed
Image copyrightOrdnance SurveyImage caption Mapping trucks were sent to battle-torn areas in World War One
In the final years of the 18 th Century, Europe was in turmoil.
England was braced for attack by the French and the government’s Board of Ordnance( a torso held liable for furnishing equipment to the Army and Navy and generally defending the realm) necessity accurate maps so it could position its troops effectively.
The OS got to work – and following completion of 1794, the coast from Fairlight Head in Sussex to Portland in Dorset had been mapped.
Image copyrightOrdnance SurveyImage caption Sixty-seven Ordnance Survey males died in WW1. This group of 32 men were wounded
When World War One have broken out, map-makers were posted overseas to replace existing French maps, which were too small in magnitude and imprecise.
Over the course of the war the teams produced at least 25 million battleground maps for utilize by British troops, and a total of 342 million for the whole war effort.
Image copyrightOrdnance SurveyImage caption At least 25 million battlefield maps were stirred for British troops in World War One
Pointy sticks
Image copyrightOrdnance Survey
In the late 1940 s and early 1950 s, crews of tape-measure exerting boys crowded around the country with large-scale pointy arrows. They were urban surveyors utilizing attached aspects such as the corners of builds as markers for map-making.
These markers were called “revision points”, and photographs were taken – often with entertained or bemused onlookers – to keep track of where these points were.
Education manager at OS, Elaine Owen, has made some of the images taken in Manchester available online. She says they evidence “a treasure-trove of images which illustrate everyday life while surveyors were going about their everyday business”.
“Many of the children[ in the pictures] would still be alive today. We’d love people to visit the website and search the places and streets they know to see if they recognise anyone, or even themselves. That would be fantastic.”
Image copyrightOrdnance SurveyImage caption “This old hat? Just something I found in the wardrobe”
Some of the oldest photographs of Stonehenge were bound in a book in 1867 and recently unearthed from the OS archives.
“Plans and Photographs of Stonehenge” shows the then-head of OS, Col Henry James, and his family having a barbecue. The volume was induced for the agency’s officers, and was therefore extremely detailed.
The survey, nonetheless, is greater accurate as the stones have since been rearranged into stances belief by experts to replicate their original ancient layout.
Image copyrightOrdnance SurveyImage caption It’s like the stones were erected for picnicking accessibility
According to English Heritage, various stones had been propped up with timber spars from the 1880 s, but concern for the safety of guests developed when an upright stone and its lintel has declined in 1900. The then-owner had it constructed safe, which was the beginning of awareness-raising campaigns to restore and conserve Stonehenge.
The last stones were consolidated in 1964.
People lived there
Image copyrightOrdnance SurveyImage caption Staff photograph taken outside the Ordnance Survey headquarters in 1875
In keeping with its military provenance, the original office of the OS was at the Tower of London. But in 1841 fire swept through the Grand Storehouse, threatening both the Crown jewel and the O’Ss accounts and instruments.
Happily, the treasure and the mapping equipment were both saved but the fire motivated the department’s move to a brand-new headquarters in an empty former barrack building in Southampton.
Slightly strangely, it wasn’t just is available as office accommodation – many faculty lived on locate.
The 1871 census accounts more than 20 children aged under 12 living at the address.
Mapping Ireland inspired a play
Image copyrightFaber and FaberImage caption The Anglicisation of place names in Ireland features in Translations, a play by Brian Friel
In 1824, Parliament ordered then-director general of the OS, Maj Thomas Colby, and his staff in the different regions of the Irish Sea as an accurate map of Ireland was needed for land taxation purposes.
Brian Friel’s play Translations is inspired by the OS survey and the difficulties the English surveyors had with Irish place names and tells the story of Owen, who returns to urban Donegal from Dublin with British army officers who are working on the six-inch-to-the-mile survey.
They carry neighbourhood place names into English – for example “Poll na gCaorach”, entailing “hole of the sheep” in Irish, grows “Poolkerry” in English.
The character of Captain Lancey is a fictionalised version of Maj Colby.
Mountaintop feasts
Image copyrightOrdnance Survey/ Find a GraveImage caption A monument to Maj Thomas Colby pays tribute to his “powerful psyche and superior scientific attainment”, but not his fondnes for a plum pud
Maj Colby was the longest-serving director general of the OS, who threw himself wholeheartedly into the job.
On one moment in 1819, he ambled 586 miles( 943 km) in 22 periods in his pursuing of cartographic perfection.
Despite being the boss, Maj Colby always tripped with his men and helped to build the camps – and at the end of each successful mission he would arrange a mountaintop party, complete with a tremendous plum pudding to top the celebration off.
Colby House, which was the seat of the OS Northern Ireland until 2014, is identified in his honour.
There was a special eclipse map
Image copyrightOrdnance SurveyImage caption Blink and you’ll miss it
On 29 June 1927, a total solar overshadow spanned Great Britain and Norway for the first time since 1724.
There was great excitement over the occurrence, and lots of people wanted to know the best way to experience such a thing, so a special map was rendered to appearance the times and places where the overshadow could be seen.
Sadly, the majority of members of Wales and England was cloudy the working day, but at locations other than construction sites where the Astronomer Royal chose to set up his camera( Giggleswick in Yorkshire) the clouds did proportion at the few moments, just long enough to capture the 23 -second totality.
Waterproof maps were available as soon as is the 1930 s
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Maps – maintaining people dry since the early days
If you thought maps were merely for noting the path, reckon again.
A special waterproofing spray process means that from the 1930 s OS maps could be used as a groundsheet and a cape in the case of a sudden shower.
And if you’re likely to invest more day picnicking than hiking, detailed maps – including those of Snowdonia, Dartmoor and the Isle of Arran – are currently available in the form of waterproof carpetings.
Image copyright Ordnance Survey 
Image copyright Ordnance Survey Image caption Mapping trucks were sent to battle-torn areas in World War One 
