Constructing the military landscape: Board of Ordnance maps and plans of Scotland c.1689 - c.1815

Project outline

The project examined an underused yet internationally significant body of material on the militarised landscapes of Scotland - the Board of Ordnance maps and plans held at the National Library of Scotland. 

The military maps produced by the Board of Ordnance were of enormous importance to the political and geographical worlds of eighteenth-century Britain.

Achievements

The research has identified new maps hitherto not thought to be part of the Board of Ordnance holdings and has produced an integrated catalogue and finding aid for the Board of Ordnance maps and plans which are located in a number of archive repositories. Links between different maps and holdings have been established, enabling different surveyors to be connected to certain places and moments for perhaps the first time since many of these unique items and their associated textual records were produced.

Carolyn Anderson was able to build on her extensive knowledge and understanding of the National Library of Scotland Map Library's collection of military maps and plans when she was awarded the Helen Wallis Fellowship (tenable at the British Library) which facilitated access to and study of the Board of Ordnance material held at the British Library, and a J.B. Harley Fellowship in the History of Cartography to undertake research in the National Archives, Kew. Carolyn also secured privileged access to the Cumberland Collection in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. This demonstrates recognition of both the value of these military maps as historical documentary sources, and the value of the collaborative project as a whole to the study of the history of cartography.   

Carolyn has presented and published material from the project. She was awarded her PhD in 2010. She is currently working at the University of Strathclyde as a Research Associate on an AHRC-funded project on 'Design and innovation in the British Empire: a historical consideration of the innovation ecosystem' (2014).