The Charles Close Society for the study of Ordnance Survey maps

Digital Images Archive

208. Half-inch (1:126,720) 'Northern Command Manoeuvre Area (Hambleton Hills)', 1908 (CCS 218B/56)

By 1908 the large sheet format of the half-inch map had supplanted its small sheet predecessor in all parts of England and Wales for some two years: thus the first surprise that confronts us with the Hambleton Hills map is that it was formed of a combination of two small sheet series sheets, 14 and 20. The second surprise is that sheet 14 was never published as a small sheet. And thirdly we find green tree symbols to portray woodland areas – logical in one sense in that it was in 1908 that the symbol was introduced on the large sheet map, but unprecedented in that it was otherwise unused on small sheet maps, where solid green woodland, cased or uncased, had been the norm. The manoeuvre area between Thirsk and Helmsley is displayed in the usual way, the designated area covered by stippled red surrounded by a solid red perimeter.

From a private collection