Mapping Swansea
Have you ever gone to a new place and got lost
without a clue where you are going? I have! Whilst visiting London, I have
wandered the streets not knowing where I am. Then I rummage in my pocket to
find a copy of a map, and to discover that I was only a few roads away from my
destination.
In this piece I am looking at Ordnance Survey,
cartography and the cartographers who have produced these maps.
We must go back to 1791, when Britain fell seriously behind other
European countries that had started their own mapping during the 1750s. It was Midsummer
Day, 1791, when Ordnance Survey was established. The agency’s name indicates
its original military purpose which was to map Scotland in the wake of
the Jacobite Rising of 1745. There was also a more general and nationwide
need in light of the potential threat of invasion during the Napoleonic Wars.
The earliest survey of the country used the technique called Principal Triangulation of Great Britain, which was a
high-precision trigonometric survey. Work was carried out by the Board of
Ordnance, governmental department from 1791 and this process was still in use
until 1853; with the first maps of Kent and part of Essex, known as The Mudge Map, having been produced during January
1801, in response to the feared invasion by the French. These beautiful maps,
forming part of the 60,000 maps belonging to King George III can be found in
the British Library, London.
One of the first maps to be produced for Swansea was drawn during 1813 by the draughtsman, Thomas Bugden. The
plan is of the Gower peninsula, Swansea Bay, and the development of Swansea
harbour at the mouth of the River Tawe. I have enlarged the Swansea part of the
map, and already we can see that some well-known places in Swansea have been
labelled. Unfortunately, we must wait till the first census in 1841, to see who
resided at these places. This map has been drawn using ink, instead of being
engraved.
The next major map that was drawn of Swansea, was during 1852, by the Local Board of Health.
The map is drawn to a huge scale of 10 feet, showing the town in immense
detail. Anyone interested in these maps can obtain a CD from the archives.
The First Edition map by the Ordnance Survey of Swansea,
was published in 1878, with surveying work being
carried out since 1867 with the scale of 1:2500 (1 cm on the map is equal 250m
on the ground), as was the Local Board of Health. This map shows buildings,
walls, hedges and even trees around the centre of Swansea. The Second Edition was produced in 1899, with surveying work starting in 1896.
The Revised Edition was produced around 1920, with surveying carried out as early as 1914 and
finally the Further Revised Edition was produced in 1947, with surveying work starting in 1936. However,
there may be parts of Swansea that have been mapped out earlier than the final
dated edition.
The surveyors of these early maps were ex Royal Engineers – an officer
having been given the title of Master-General of Ordnance, but the post was
eliminated in 2013. One notable Master-General of Ordnance, was the hero of
Waterloo, Richard Hussey Vivian, 1st Baron Vivian, brother of John Henry Vivian. In the portrait it shows Richard wearing his uniform of the Master-General. In
this article I have provided maps of Gloucester Street, Swansea.
Following an excellent series aired on BBC2, A House
Through Time, presented by David Olusoga, the ‘House’ in question was 62 Falkner Street, Liverpool. A
house randomly picked to chart its history from its first inhabitants of the
1840s and 50s, to the present day. Posing a question, could this be done here
in Swansea? I have already started!
In a previous article that I wrote in February 2017 titled History of a House, I made a start by looking at the
history of 2 Gloucester Place with Stirling Benson, JP,
who seems to be a man of mystery, not having completed the 1841 census. At this
time there were just five houses and a public house, Gloucester House, which
has long gone. During 1889 a murder was carried out and the landlord was
brutally murdered. Gloucester Place has a small number of houses brimming with
history, just waiting to be discovered.
If anyone who lives in Gloucester Place is
interested in establishing the history of their house, please contact me. In
fact, if any reader would like the history of their house researched, please
contact me
Copyright
– The Bay Magazine – March 2018
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