The web site Old-Maps.co.uk is a poor thing nowadays. At one time you could download the maps free but they quickly twigged they could make some cash by charging the poor punter. In any event, their so-called zoom view is pretty tragic too. So, I have found a much better place for the old 6" series sheets, which, although you cannot download them, per se, is zoomable and, with some half decent screen capture software on your computer, sections can be copied to be viewed off line, printed &c.
The site is National Library of Scotland (free at present but who knows what will happen in future!). They have the full set of 6" sheets covering England, Scotland and Wales and also have some 25" versions but these are very localised and only seem to cover certain areas north of the border. A grid view of red squares overlaid by a Google-type map allows choice of area and zooming to the area of choice throws up, not only one available sheet but a whole raft of them depending on the original publication dates. These sheets, in datal order are shown on the right hand of the page, but, of course, the oldest are the best where it comes to detail, the likes of thee and me would be interested in!
http://maps.nls.uk/os/ 
but to short cut you through the menu this is the link to the Camborne area, as a "for instance"
http://maps.nls.uk/geo/find/#zoom=11&lat=50.25493&lon=-5.05404&layers=B000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTFFFFFFFT 
and, from that view you will be able to zoom out and navigate elsewhere in England and Wales. Maps shown on right hand side are listed as oldest (and best) at the top.

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Another excellent source of old maps (principally covering the N.E. of England, including Derbyshire) is

http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

These are not free, but for example, the CD containing high quality scans of all the 2nd Edition (c1898) 25 inch maps of Derbyshire costs £25-00.

We find these invaluable for landscape survey work in the Peak District.

A shame that the digital archives site doesn't really cover the North East. Durham and Northumberland (and Westmorland) being sadly not in their scope.

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I just ordered the Derbyshire edition - £25 is nothing if it saves me squinting at tiny maps with watermarks over the important bits! Would be nice if there were later versions too, as some features I'm interested in don't appear till the 1922 editions for example, but better than nowt for now...

For £25, I suspect they are compromised in some manner?

Otherwise they would just be like the maps of Cornwall...people passing copies around willy-nilly.

Sorry about the previous N.E. - should have been N.W.

No they are not compromised - they are out of copyright, so the O.S. have no control.

http://www.aditnow.co.uk/documents/Personal-Album-5321/Smithy-Hills.pdf 

They are scanned to a very high quality, cleaned nicely, and are square.

For £25 you get a wonderful resource - and it isn't worth pirating at that price.

Many of the sites I am interested in predate the OS, unfortunately! 😞

Indeed - me too. One of my current conundrums is from 1728, with more squiggles and embellishments (including angelic heads blowing 'wind') than I care to mention. Accuracy wasn't its strong point certainly, but it looks lovely 😉

When viewing the old maps website, use a mac and safari with grab software. Enlarge the view. Get good results.

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For £25, I suspect they are compromised in some manner?.

I cannot afford the Derbyshire disc yet - but the Lancashire 1893 25in sets from the same firm are certainly not compromised in any way

I wish there was a Streetview option on these old online OS maps! 😉

I have a repro copy of Burdetts 1791 map of Derbyshire, did he do other counties?

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I use this site;
http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/maps/ 
Historic OS Maps, 1" and 2.5" maps of most of the UK

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