Well having now spoken to 2 people I know re this today... its gone down like a lead brick... Ithink these people are very short sighted... The best thing they could do would be to offer a user agreement! I would buy a licence sensibly priced tomorrow! So would most I think...

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Well having now spoken to 2 people I know re this today... its gone down like a lead brick... Ithink these people are very short sighted... The best thing they could do would be to offer a user agreement! I would buy a licence sensibly priced tomorrow! So would most I think...

I certainly would - are there any OS people on AN who could put a word in for us?

This site can be good for maps Mustly Scotland but...

http://maps.nls.uk/os/index.html 

The beauty of Old-Maps was that you could get 1:10000 versions showing a lot of detail that 1:20000 or 1:25000 did not have on it. Also you can choose all the various years of publishing.

The closest thing to it now that I know of is the Durham CC website, but this mostly covers Durham and surrounding counties. You can get 1:10000 and various years.

see:

http://gis.durham.gov.uk/website/interMAP/viewer.htm 

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For the North Pennines you can also view the Cumbria GIS by a labyrinthe of routes, but their historic section is not as good as Durham GIS.

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For the Leeds area (unfortunately only Leeds as far south as Batley) there's this site "The "Leeds Tithe Map Project" with tithe maps, old OS maps (1890/1910), a modern map and aerial views from 2006 + 1999:

http://www.tracksintime.wyjs.org.uk/ 

Excellent layout, excellent resolution and wouldn't it be nice if OM had this - "This copy is for private study or research for non-commercial purposes only" - under all their maps like the LTMP maps do. You can even display vintages and modern/aerial side by side and choose portrait or landscape format for printing in A4 format (with automatic print set-up too):

There's no watermark on their maps either.

That is what I call user-friendly!

Examples from the Leeds Tithe map site - West Ardsley Colliery:

Low resolution, reduced size screen shot in portrait format 1910/modern

http://www.aditnow.co.uk/photo/Personal-Album-8946-Image-74673/ 

Landscape format screen shot

http://www.aditnow.co.uk/photo/Personal-Album-8946-Image-74672/ 

Portrait format saved map (right click save as)

http://www.aditnow.co.uk/photo/Personal-Album-8946-Image-74671/ 

http://maps.northamptonshire.gov.uk  & it does have some historical coverage, works a lot better thatn old maps as you can print measure & add placemarks without annoying watermarks on the historical maps.

Chris

Old maps winds me up.

This data is ours - Our ancestors paid for it during the years. I am quite happy to pay the actual costs for running the web site etc etc but I really don't see how they can justify £16 for an A3 PDF. Look at the Alan Godfrey editions £2:50 for a printed sheet with historical notes!

The crazy thing is they could probably make far more by charging nominal sums, I would have bought plenty of sheets at a pound or two. There are plenty of similar models in the Family History game, look at National Records, Find My past etc.

I tried to raise this with the Guardians free our data campaign which now seems to have faded away but I don't think they got too excited about old maps - can't imagine why!

Yours frustrated

Peoples Collection Wales provides first, second and where available third edition mapping on the link below.

http://www.peoplescollectionwales.co.uk/Places/FullMap 

At one point several years ago, the first edition maps were free to download. I downloaded several thousand, totally free of charge.
o/s should get real and charge a reasonable price. They'd make more in the long run

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There is a lot of OS digital mapping data free to download or order on CD also free of charge via the Opendata service.

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendatadownload/products.html 

Lipsi is right. Copyright normaly expires after 70 years and early O/S maps must have limited commercial value, except for educational purposes, research and special interest groups.

Like a lot of people, I am tired at peering into a tiny window on some clunky viewer to get any information at all. The O/S was a government department in the past and why should we not enjoy rights of access of free?

I think part of the problem is not the original map data exactly, but the scanning of it. It was Landmark (someone may correct me) who originally scanned the data and made it available via the Athens licensing services to Universities and other educational institutions as part of their subscription services. I imagine their "right to charge" or copyright licensing is not to the original maps as such but rather the digital copy/data of them, just as Google are now doing. They are I suppose charging for the work they have done in scanning/indexing/tiling etc. the original maps into the digital form we can use.

In passing I much prefer the old "county" series 25" OS mapping to its modern digital counterparts, which are very sterile and lacking in surface feature detail, following the trend begun by the 1960s 6" and 25" National Grid ones.

Let's hope they recant, I cannot imagine that they actually lost potential customers because of the availability of the Enhanced zoom features. The people who want, and will pay for, the maps as a wall display picture will do so whatever level of zoom is produced, while the rest of us who are interested in how the historical landscape has changed would not have bought them anyway, as too expensive for the use we make of them.

The browser app always stated that the images were "not for commercial use" ie resale or similar, and I think they would be quite within their rights to take legal action against anyone trying to do that. Depriving the rest of us of access to such a valuable (in a non monetary sense) resource which we have no intention of using for gain is just sad. 😢

Its the way the world is going.....

Cheers

Grahami

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Lipsi is right. Copyright normaly expires after 70 years and early O/S maps must have limited commercial value, except for educational purposes, research and special interest groups.

Landmark would seem to think otherwise the way they're pithching their historical maps as due diligence and environmental tools.

http://www.envirocheck.co.uk/products/historical_maps_data/maps_historical/ 

There is a lot of OS digital mapping data free to download or order on CD also free of charge via the Opendata service.

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendatadownload/products.html 

As far as I can see that is all very modern maps only (the oldest being 2010).

Landmark are a fair sized company, and Old-Maps must be a tiny part of their business. Ironically their news pages declared:

"In 2010 we will be adding many new and exciting features to the site."

What they failed to add is that they would be removing them in 2012! Possibly the cost of the bandwidth was becoming unpalatable compared to the revenue gained.

Their business model is a little outdated if they are simply trying to sell pieces of paper over the internet (or by download). Surely generating site traffic could be more lucrative.

The OS Get-a Map seems to have gone down the annual charge route, so lets hope that is being considered for Old-Maps.

It appears to me that you are missing the point here! How can I buy a map when I don't know what I am getting? The idea of the site is to sell maps, the enhanced zoom is required to make sure you are getting what you want. At the moment the site is not money making so they will have to bring it back or improve the site so you can see what you are getting

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Its a bit like a bookshop where you are only allowed to look at the book covers when choosing a book to buy. Every book shop accepts the idea that some people will occasionally use it as a library!

I used it for a lot of research but also as a bit of a try before you buy site & have bought a number of maps from them but probably won't do anymore, as has been said if you can't see what you are buying I'm not going to buy something that is very expensive.