Catalogue of British Town Maps

Chair and Project Director: Professor Roger Kain FBA

This research project on the urban cartography of Britain was part of a long-term research programme based at Exeter University to record and analyse the pre-Ordnance Survey, large-scale maps of the nation. Notwithstanding the number of town maps that are extant, their wide dispersal, and their utility to historians and others, researchers have few descriptive and analytical finding aids to help identify and locate maps of a particular place. This project aimed to provide this much-needed research tool by locating, cataloguing and describing all town maps. It also analysed the database to provide information for writing a narrative history of town mapping, producing the first book-length exploration of the enmeshing of town maps in the history of any country. This was published as British Town Maps: A History in 2015. 

Professor Roger Kain FBA: [email protected]