A History of BIRMINGHAM Places & Placenames . . . from A to Y

William Dargue - A History of Birmingham Places & Placenames . . .  from A to Y

 

Weblinks

Birmingham On-Line Maps

Each of the placename entries has a grid reference in the heading - copy & paste that grid reference into the Search box at - Ordnance Survey Get-a-map,  Multimap  or  Streetmap.

 

Ordnance Survey Get-a-map

To help readers find places listed in the Gazetteer the Ordnance Survey OS Landranger grid reference is always included for the main entry. Cut & Paste it into the Search box on the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map website to see OS maps at various scales, the highest is 1:25 000. Alternatively enter a full postcode or placename. Not all placenames mentioned in this document are available and not all placenames shown on the OS maps can be searched for. The website also tends to be fussy about apostrophes.

Multimap or Streetmap

Enter the grid reference into the Find a Place/ Search box on the Multimap or Streetmap websites. It is also possible to enter the full address, streetname, district, town, partial or full postcode. Not all placenames in this document are available. Having found a location on a map, both Multimap and Streetmap allow users to find Landranger grid references, latitude & longitude and postcodes. Streetmap also allows users to find full OS co-ordinates.

There are other mapping websites but not all take grid references. As well as an aerial view Multimap also has a birds' eye view facility - and now Ordnance Survey maps.

To find full postcodes visit the Post Office website where the streetname and town should be entered.

 

Google Earth

Download Google Earth to access satellite and aerial photographs of anywhere in the world. The detail of the Birmingham pictures is remarkable. There is an option to superimpose streets. Enter a partial or full postcode, a streetname or a placename in the Search box. Not all the placenames mentioned in this document are available. See also Google Maps.

See also Microsoft's Live Search Maps which also has bird's eye views.

A good freeware site is ACME whose ACME Mapper gives a full page view. 

 

Old Maps

British History Online  -  for Old Ordnance Survey maps

For old Ordnance Survey maps go to the British History Online website and look up Maps. Here can be found the Ordnance Survey 1:2,500 Epoch 1 County Series maps at scale 1:2500 for Birmingham and other cities; and the 1:10,560 Epoch 1 County Series of maps for Great Britain, dating from 1840, the first comprehensive mapping of England, Scotland and Wales. Birmingham places can be found in the maps of Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Not all the placenames in this document can be accessed in this way.

The Old Map Site Seems to be the personal site of Simon Davies. This site provides old map scans taken over a 40 year period from the late 1940s to the late 1980s showing how the road network has developed in key areas. The maps are taken from a variety of old sources, including my collection of old Bartholemew atlases. I have not used extracts newer than 1990 as the road network hasn't changed greatly since then, and I am not keen to reproduce maps that are still earning their owners money! The site also hosts Alistair Beaton's retro-strip maps showing how some of our motorways would have looked when first constructed.

Old Maps The website of Landmark Information Group which contains 85 000 scanned images of 1:10,560 scale OS County Series First Edition, which can be viewed on-line, and date from 1846 and 1899. This is a commercial website from you can buy printed copies of the maps.

Maps - Alan Godfrey Maps Invaluable maps for historians and genealogists. More than 2,000 titles have been issued in this major series of reprints of Old Ordnance Survey Maps of towns throughout Britain and Ireland. Most are highly detailed, taken from the 1/2500 plans and reprinted at about 14 inches to the mile. They cover towns in great detail, showing individual houses, railway tracks, factories, churches, mills, canals, tramways and even minutiae such as dockside cranes, fountains, signal posts, pathways, sheds, wells, etc. Each map includes historical notes on the area concerned. Many include extracts from contemporary directories.

Maps - Popular Edition Ordnance Survey Maps 1930s A site owned by Andrew Rowbottom intended to provide a view of England and Wales as it appeared in the Ordnance Survey maps of the 1930s. As an added benefit you can also see how the world looks today using Google maps satellite imagery.

Maps, New Popular Edition This is a collection initiated by Richard Fairhurst of scanned Ordnance Survey maps, New Popular Edition, from the 1940s and 1950s. The purpose of the project is not historical but to make a freely available collection of postcodes across the country. Because the maps are older than 50 years old the copyright has expired. The scanned images are the copyright of the website owners © 2005-2007, but are available for personal and for non-commercial use as long as they are attributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial Licence 2.5.

Maps, Chorographia Britanniae A detailed examination of the Chorographia Britanniæ atlas of the counties of England and Wales published 1742 by William Henry Toms. Clear images of Toms’ county maps, various editions. This seems to be the personal site of Alan Yates.

Maps, Old and Interesting, of England Wales and Scotland - Genmaps  A site devoted to online images of English, Welsh and Scottish maps from their beginnings to the early 20th Century intended to be for the use of historians, educators and genealogists for non-commercial research purposes. See Warwickshire including Birmingham, Worcestershire and Staffordshire.

Maps, Ordnance Survey The national mapping agency of Great Britain.

Maps, Old Towns of England A commercial site offering old maps in either hard copy or on CD, as well as a free collection of articles on English towns first published in The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Distribution of Useful Knowledge between 1833 and 1848.

Maps, Village Atlas The Village Atlas series was conceived in the mid-1980s to produce a convenient and comprehensive reference, for the professional researcher and layman interested in their home area. With the assistance of the British Library, original survey sheets 1805-1913 were reproduced at 2" to the mile, a 100% increase which greatly enhanced clarity. These reproductions were then cut and pasted together so that locations which had been split between sheets could be viewed as one. Each Atlas covers an area of c1500 square miles, divided into 50-square mile blocks. Three maps for each block, printed on consecutive double-page spreads, allow the reader to study the changes within the area at the turn of a page.