Constructing the Military Landscape

Aims and Objectives

The project is examining an underused yet internationally significant body of material on the militarised landscapes of Scotland , the Board of Ordnance maps and plans.

For more details please go to the project summary document

Progress and Highlights

Year 1

• The research has identified new maps hitherto not thought to be part of the Board of Ordnance holdings

• The research is looking to provide, for the first time, an integrated catalogue and finding aid for the Board of Ordnance maps and plans in the several archive repositories and this significant achievement is well advanced

• The PhD student, Carolyn Anderson, has been awarded the Helen Wallis Fellowship (tenable at the British Library) which will facilitate access to and study of the Board of Ordnance material the and in the National Archives, Kew

Year 2

• The focus for study in the second year of the project has been military maps which were of enormous importance to the political and geographical worlds of eighteenth-century Britain .

• The research has been able to establish clearly the links between different maps and holdings and has been able to connect different surveyors to certain places and moments for perhaps the first time since many of these unique items and their associated textual records were produced.

• Recognition of the value of these military maps as historical documentary sources, and the collaborative project as a whole to the study of the history of cartography by trustees of two internationally renowned fellowship programmes is thus proving to be of considerable importance.

• The focus of work this year has allowed the student to build on knowledge and understanding of the National Library of Scotland Map Library collection of military maps and plans as a result of periods of extensive placement at the British Library and The National Archives, and privileged access to the Cumberland Collection in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle .