Maps - National Library of Scotland

The National Library of Scotland has published some wonderful maps (120,000 of them) which give great street-level detail over a number of years.  I've spent a number of happy hours going through these and I include this resource on this blog as using these maps can not only pinpoint home addresses for soldier ancestors but also identify where a man fought.

 

 

First things first. The website address is http://maps.nls.uk/index.html and the site is highly usable. Readers of this blog will be particularly interested to know that trench maps for France and Belgium from the First World War are also included on the site, as well as British War Office maps for Belgium covering the period 1942-1944. What's more, you can overlay these maps on a modern Google or Bing map which in turn could prove invaluable when tramping the muddy fields of France and Belgium.

 

In the images above, from the top, we see a map of Ypres in June 1917, then a satellite view of Ypres today, and finally a combination of the two. It's really very clever. Go and play.

 

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