An interesting talk was presented to members of the Bury Local History Society by Dr. Paul Hindle telling members of the history of map drawing and the types of maps produced which could be useful in Local History research.

Going back in time to the 17th century Dr. Hindle described an early strip map of the Lake District. In these maps north was not necessarily at the top but could in fact be in any direction, very much like those of Alfred Wainwright in his Lake District walks books. Showing part of a map of Hereford from 1610 and showing the town walls the scale was shown as the number of paces to the inch rather than of miles.

Other kinds of maps shown were those of town plans, or estate plans of one person. These just showed fields and paths on the estate of one or more persons, completely ignoring adjoining fields which belonged to other people. Later plans of this type would include rights of way as well.

One map of great detail showed London before the great fire engulfed the city and drawn to a scale of 8 feet to 1 inch. It showed the names of people who lived in each house.

A map of Bury in Saxon times had details of place names and rivers.

These were political maps commissioned by the Government but no roads were shown on them until a hundred years later, when Bury was shown in Salford Hundred and a map of Manchester around the Victoria area, probably the oldest part of Manchester, showed individual properties.

When the Ordnance Survey started producing maps, some were military maps with details of roads, fields and supplies of water which might have been useful to the military, but no houses were shown on these, nor on the 1830s Tithe Maps, showing the Parish, areas of land which would be titheable and these numbered individually.

There were also health maps showing where people had died of cholera in an attempt to find the origin of the outbreak; social maps to show areas of different classes of people, fire insurance maps with width of roads and fire hydrants for use by the fire fighters of the late 19th century.

The range of maps shown was as wide as the reasons behind their production and the amount of information not shown was as interesting as that which was part of the construction of the maps themselves.

The next meeting of the society is on April 5th when Barbara Inman will introduce 'Bury on the Bookshelf'. Because the rooms are not available in the evening because of Church requirements on the evening, the day before Good Friday, the meeting will commence at 2.00 p.m. at the clubrooms of St. Marie's Church Rooms on Manchester Road.

Roy Turner