Skip to start of page content

Ellis Martin Cover, 1934

Elliss Martin Cover, 1934

Old Maps

These online versions of Old Maps of Lancashire were produced by The Environment Directorate's Archaeology Service. Part of the remit of this service is to educate and inform the public about Lancashire's historic environment.

We currently have 8 full county maps of Lancashire for online viewing. In addition we now have several town maps c.1890 based on the 1:2500 OS first editions and some based on the 1:10,560 first editions of 1845, plus one Tithe Map.

If you are interested in locating old Parishes then the OS Index of early editons map is probably the best place to start.

Many of the original paper maps from which these digital versions were scanned are held in the Lancashire Record Office, where they can be inspected. If you are interested in studying old maps or tracing family history then this is the place to go. They also offer for sale maps on CD-ROM, currently Hennet and Yates (Lancashire), Jeffery's (Yorkshire) and a 3 CD-ROM set of 1:2500 first editions (c.1893) of pre-1974 Lancashire. Contact them direct if you are interested.

Mario, our Geographic Information System (GIS) includes historic maps of more of Lancashire at scales of 1:10,600 (c.1845) and 1:2500 (c.1890) for several towns. Modern aerial photographs are also available for all of Lancashire. Because of internet limitations the map area is smaller than the maps here but if you are interested in an area not covered here then it is definitely the place to try.

Note: In 1974 the administrative boundaries of Lancashire were redrawn and the Counties of Greater Manchester and Merseyside formed. Apart from the whole county maps we have no detailed maps of those areas.

Lancashire - Full County Maps

  • Gough, c.1360
    The so-called Gough Map is the earliest surviving map of Britain dating from c.1360. It’s origins are unknown and owes it name to, Richard Gough (1735-1809), in whose collection it was found. This extract is from the OS 1935 facsimile which is reasonably legible. The original is coloured and is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford but is much less legible. An online version of the original has now been made available by Queens University, Belfast: QUB Link
  • Speed, 1610 - Black & White - Colour
    John Speed's map of Lancashire is one of the earliest and shows towns and villages but no highways.
    Warning: the file sizes are large - even the black and white copy is 430k
  • Yates, 1786
  • Greenwood, 1818 - Colour map and probably our best!
  • Hennet, 1829
  • OS Index of early edition 6-inch and 25-inch Maps - Key map with Parishes
  • Lancashire Hundreds
    The 6 hundreds are believed to originate before the Domesday Book and the formation of Lancashire itself!
  • Lancashire Administrative County 1929/37
    Map of Lancashire dated 1937 and featuring the then parishes with the areas for the Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths . This shows the county boundary as it was between 1888 and 1974. File size = 1.4Mb.

OS First Edition 1/10,560 (6-inch) c. 1845 - Large area

OS First Edition 1/10,560 (6-inch) c. 1845 - Small area

OS First Edition Maps 1/2,534 (25-inch) c. 1890

OS 1/10,560 (6-inch) Maps - c. 1910

OS 1-inch Maps (Colour) 1950s

Note publication dates 1953-1955

Other maps

Notes

These maps have been scanned at 200dpi and are reproduced here at generally half that resolution. Several of them had to be scanned as greyscale to retain legibility and have had to be published as jpegs with some loss of quality.

Printing these maps can be a problem if you only have an A4 printer. You can change the format to landscape and get a bit wider. The alternative is to centre the area you are interested in on the screen, then press the PrtSc (printscreen) key to put it in the clipboard. By opening a package such as Word or Powerpoint, you can then paste in the screen image and print from there. Another method is to right click on the map tile and save it to your computer. You can then open it in Paintshop or similar graphics programme, crop it and print at any scale.

WindowsXP/Internet Explorer 6: By default this browser resizes images to fit the screen. To view the maps full size you will need to un-tick the resize images box under:- Tools>Internet Options>Advanced>Multimedia.

Copyright: This is complex as both these scans and the base maps are separately subject to copyright! As regards the original paper maps, Crown copyright (eg OS maps) lasts for 50 years, everything else for 70 years. The base maps from which these scans were derived are now (believed to be) out of copyright but these scans are copyright Lancashire County Council. There is no objection to using these maps for personal research but they cannot be reproduced elsewhere. If you need to refer to them then please link to them here and include an acknowledgement to Lancashire County Council.

Related Links

  • MARIO - Maps And Related Information Online - old maps, aerial photos and much much more! For old maps try the transparent option.
  • Museums - a guide to Lancashire's museums including opening hours.
  • Lancaster University - maps of Lancaster and surrounding area from Lancaster University Library's map collection.

Note: Lancashire County Council is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites

Contact

For queries and suggestions regarding these maps email :archaeology@lancashire.gov.uk

 
| Environment Directorate
Can't find it? |