The Charles Close Society for the study of Ordnance Survey maps

Digital Images Archive

No.1 Hants 83.7

This is a WD-only version of Hants 83.7 in its uncoloured form. A number of points are instructive:

1. South of Portsmouth Harbour station is a sharply-defined area of whiter paper. This is a paste-over, obscuring the Albert Pier, whose line can be seen on the index sheet. The paste-over does not quite reach the shore, and one can make out messy deletion where the shore end of the pier has been scraped away. The paste-over obscured the 'B' of a benchmark and this has been restored in red ink.
2. In the NE corner was an area of mud (visible on the Index sheet) where new detail has been drawn: Tidal Basin, Fitting Out Basin, Rigging Basin, Repairing Basin. This is an area for which the 1:500 (83.7.5) was never produced. The ink used has now turned grey, the detail is somewhat skeletal, and it extends beyond the neatlines. One wonders whether this survey is of a later date than the parts in red ink. The Institute of Civil Engineers held a "Discussion on Portsmouth Dockyard Extension" (accessible online) in February 1881 so the works were complete by that date.
3. Below 'Weevil Lake' is the pencil note "Decayed tree to be removed" with a line to a tree between Bastions 3 and 4, and what seems to be an 1892 date - evidence for the subsequent use of this set of maps.