I’m Dianne, and I’m a mapaholic! I probably inherited my bug from my late father, Ernie Easter. Perhaps his long employment at Decca Navigator had something to do with that. I have OS maps, A-Z maps, historic maps, local cycling and orienteering maps – the list goes on. About 30 years ago I vowed never to buy another map of Swindon until they’d finished building. Needless to say I’m still waiting for that time to come.
A lot of our map reading now is online. Of course Google Maps is ubiquitous – their scanner cars can frequently be seen. I once saw a chap in our pedestrianised shopping centre with a scanner strapped to his head, recording it for the streetview. I hope they were paying him well.
For genealogy and family history though, we’re more often wanting to know what a place was like in the past. Where is that street that our ancestor lived in? Is that house still there? How far did our ancestors have to walk to get to work, to buy food, to go to school?
My mother was born in (or on, as the locals say) Goldenhill in Stoke-on-Trent. Like many other places in the UK, the 1950s saw many road names being changed which can add to a researchers confusion. Did Albert Street become Charlotte Street? Renaming was mainly because of the huge growth of towns and cities in the Victorian age, where remembering royal family members and great battles of the Boer Wars was popular with town planners all over England leading to much confusion as people began to travel more.
A great resource is the National Libraries of Scotland’s “side by side” maps. As you can see on this screenshot, the old and new maps present side by side, and as you move your cursor on one pane, it moves on the other pane, allowing you to see the changes.
Clicking the search button lets you choose a location, and the panel at the top allows you to change historic and modern maps. This shot is using the OS six inch from 1888 to 1913, with the Bing hybrid modern view.
Map co-ordinates are shown at the bottom of the pane, and depending on the maps chosen you can search by current or historic place name, by co-ordinates, by county and parish. Historic maps for industry are also an option.
If you look at the centre of the historic map you’ll see Church Lane, a common road name then and now. If you look at the modern view, you’ll see the name has changed to Elgood Lane.
On the left-hand pane the map is from 1888 to 1913, and you can see the many collieries and old collieries in the area – a useful hint to one of the main occupations in the area at the time. On the right-hand pane you can see the expansion of housing in the area. This is helpful when searching for a possible address of an ancestor, or considering when they may have moved to that address.
Easter Family Genealogy 