The Charles Close Society for the study of Ordnance Survey maps

Digital Images Archive

GSGS 3036 England 2½-inch sheet 85NE, with British system grid<

79. See also sheets 128E (no.22), 128W (no.70). The life of the military map of East Anglia at the real 2½-inch scale was extended after the first world war until the second in two phases: first, in 1925 by adding the British system grid, then, in 1931, adopting instead the Modified British system grid. In 1935 there were instructions to call in and destroy all surviving copies of the 1925 map. None are held by the Military Survey collection now in the British Library: this copy is a rare survivor of this process. This is one of the early 1914 sheets issued in the original specification which included a confidential red plate, showing telegraph and telephone lines, identifying steep slopes along roads and giving the width of bridges and culverts, highlighting churches and describing the viewing potential from high ground. This was deleted by 1925, but it is noteworthy that the military information present on the green and blue plates was unaffected. Changes to the black plate included the addition of a GSGS number and new adjoining sheet diagrams. There was some revision within the neatline, including the deletion of the population figure for Cambridge (doubtless out of date). Strangely the renaming of railways caused by grouping was ignored.

From a copy in a private collection