To understand family histories it helps to
have a view of the geography of where people lived. The
following maps have been prepared to assist with this.
Because of the limitations of graphics files I will be publishing
the majority of maps as PDF (Portable Document Format) files -
these need a viewer such as the widely available Adobe Acrobat
viewer but are capable of being scaled to show fine detail.
Only very simple plans will be presented as embedded graphics for direct
viewing.
I do not mind the maps being used on other sites provided that they are not modified in any
way this includes not only visual changes but also
"optimising" and changing the file format or resolution. If you
do wish to use the maps please let me know so that I can advise
you if I make changes.
Based loosely on an extract from the Ordnance
Survey sheet SD73 map published in 1955 (and now out of
copyright) the map shows the area around Great Harwood and gives
locations of farms and settlements from 1790 onwards.
There are a nunber of locations that cannot be positioned
with any certainty on the map. This page shows details and an indication of
the general area they could be found in.
The plan shows the streets
in Great Harwood as mapped in 1892 and 1909, the 1848 roads are
coloured differently to show the rapid expansion of the town
during the latter part of the 19th Century. A preview is shown
below.
This is a list of street names and their
locations taken from the Barrett's 1906 Directory - it may be
of use in identifying some of the minor streets not shown on
the plans.
Churches & Chapels in Great Harwood
There are additional maps and plans that I have produced
but which are not related to the families on this site on my
Extra
Maps and Plans page.
Ordnance Survey maps
Britain is probably one of the best
mapped countries in the world, the Ordnance Survey maps provide a
wealth of accurate information regarding the geography and
topology of the country. Because of this anything on the maps is
usually taken as unquestionably correct, this can be a mistake!
One area where the maps can be misleading is where
text is not associated with a building, feature, or other object.
Sometimes text is positioned for readability. A
particular example of this occurs in Great Harwood - the 1848 map
shows "Hindle Fold" in its correct location (see the mid-19th
century map above), by 1892, however it had drifted to the South
East and is shown to the North East of St Bartholemew's church,
which is where it still appears to be in the 1996 Explorer
1:25,000 mapping.
Some
observations on graphics formats
Building the maps used on
the site has involved a number of steps, the last of which is the
production of a file suitable for use on the Internet. All
the maps are produced using vector imaging as this allows much
better editing than is possible with raster (bitmap) editors. Web
browsers, however, do not provide much consistent support for
vector images so it is necessary to produce a graphic for viewing
or downloading. There is a choice of four formats which I could
uses - GIF, JPEG, PNG and PDF. After researching the formats I discarded
JPEG, which is ideal for photographic images with many shades of
colour but does not scale well without introducing distortion.
GIF images would traditionally have been used for line
drawings such as maps, however the newer PNG format offers
similar benefits with better control over the compression, so for
embedded images I will be using the PNG format unless a GIF
offers a smaller file size. PNG and GIF do not offer any
ability to zoom within the browser so the image must be a
trade-off between screen size and text readability.
For the more detailed maps which need the capability to zoom and
pan the image I will use PDF files as this format is widely
supported by browser add-ons such as Adobe Reader. These files
can be quite large but lines and text can be represented as
vector objects allowing incredibly powerful zooming and thus the
use of very small text for fine detail.
