Ordnance Survey corrections

[Ming the Merciless]

Surely, for the sake of balance in the sphere of English place names, there must be a Little Cockup somewhere nearby?

Indeed

 

[Aravis]

OS denied they did in the AA court case. I'd be surprised if they lied in front of a judge.

Although it's far more exciting to think that errors might be put in deliberately, all the examples I've found (or become aware of) have looked more like genuine mistakes rather than anything clandestine.

This is one which I find interesting, and more than a bit puzzling.

In the OS one-inch "Popular" series from 1919, the village of Midford, south of Bath, is represented like this:

The railway aligned north-south is the former Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway. The east-west line is part of the Bristol and North Somerset Railway which reused parts of the course of the Somerset Coal Canal; earlier OS maps show only the canal.

The maps shows the S&D crossing the river on a viaduct, with the BNS passing under the viaduct but over the road which runs parallel to the viaduct. This is an accurate representation of the reality.

The next OS one-inch series was the fifth, appearing in 1931. The configuration of the railways and the road has been obscured and little detail can be discerned:

It's fair to say that the production of the fifth series was problematic and it was never completed, coverage being restricted to southern England. The sixth series, known as the New Popular, began to appear in 1945. This introduced the now-familiar portrait configuration for the first time; there was no full revision so the maps used as their base whatever was the latest available. Unless you were in the favoured south you had to make do largely with the world of 1919.

Now the details of the rail and road crossings have been put back, but not as they were before:

Deliberate or otherwise, this might well have served as an effective copyright trap.

The final one-inch series was the seventh, beginning in 1952. This was based on a full revision, and the details have now all been put back correctly:

Although both of the railways disappeared long ago, happily the viaduct now forms part of a cycle route. But there is a final twist in this tale; the scene was immortalised in the opening sequence of The Titfield Thunderbolt so the evidence of the 1945 "error" will never be erased.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAd-NIz_78E

 

[briantrumpet]

Although it's far more exciting to think that errors might be put in deliberately, all the examples I've found (or become aware of) have looked more like genuine mistakes rather than anything clandestine.

This is one which I find interesting, and more than a bit puzzling.

In the OS one-inch "Popular" series from 1919, the village of Midford, south of Bath, is represented like this:

View attachment 772870

The railway aligned north-south is the former Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway. The east-west line is part of the Bristol and North Somerset Railway which reused parts of the course of the Somerset Coal Canal; earlier OS maps show only the canal.

The maps shows the S&D crossing the river on a viaduct, with the BNS passing under the viaduct but over the road which runs parallel to the viaduct. This is an accurate representation of the reality.

The next OS one-inch series was the fifth, appearing in 1931. The configuration of the railways and the road has been obscured and little detail can be discerned:

View attachment 772872

It's fair to say that the production of the fifth series was problematic and it was never completed, coverage being restricted to southern England. The sixth series, known as the New Popular, began to appear in 1945. This introduced the now-familiar portrait configuration for the first time; there was no full revision so the maps used as their base whatever was the latest available. Unless you were in the favoured south you had to make do largely with the world of 1919.

Now the details of the rail and road crossings have been put back, but not as they were before:

View attachment 772873

Deliberate or otherwise, this might well have served as an effective copyright trap.

The final one-inch series was the seventh, beginning in 1952. This was based on a full revision, and the details have now all been put back correctly:

View attachment 772874

Although both of the railways disappeared long ago, happily the viaduct now forms part of a cycle route. But there is a final twist in this tale; the scene was immortalised in the opening sequence of The Titfield Thunderbolt so the evidence of the 1945 "error" will never be erased.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAd-NIz_78E

Brilliant!

I do remember that before Google Maps and satellite imagery were easily available, OS maps omitted MOD stuff... I only realised when looking up a couple of bridges over the M5 near Puriton in Somerset (1980s), and only one of them was on the map at the time: the other one went to a military facility.

 

[briantrumpet]

A really nice reply from OS:

Ordnance Survey don't add in 'trap streets' (as they are often known) as the accuracy of our maps is held to be more important than catching potential copyright infringers. With regards to the well-known AA lawsuit, this was not to do with place name or depiction errors, but specific styles and methods of capturing and depicting data on maps. As you mention, mis-spellings are easy to catch nowadays, where maps can be accessed easily on the go via mobile devices.

So if you do spot a spelling mistake on our mapping it's either a genuine error or a holdover from an earlier mapping - in some of the more remote parts of GB the names were added based on so-called local knowledge, which may have been the information a local landowner or church had on record.

 

[raleighnut]

If you want to see really inaccurate maps go to Eire, in some places the headings can be 30 degrees out and distances longer than stated. Legend has this as deliberate mistakes being worked in by the Irish surveying assistants to confuse the enemy (English) but another theory is it being caused by Iron Pyrites sufficient to cause deflection in compasses