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!

That is very true. In fact many bookshops have coffee shops to enhance the perusing experience.

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.

Send them an email, moaning about it, might make them change their minds, in fact everyone do !

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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!

That is very true. In fact many bookshops have coffee shops to enhance the perusing experience.

Yes, but you'll be asked to leave if you start photographing the pages so you don't ever have to buy.

I'll miss it immensely, but I can't see it coming back just because we all liked it but never actually spent a penny on a printed map.

The price was wrong for what you got, one small section of a map in PDF for £16 is radiculous.

If £16 bought you a section of map with all the other availabe time periods for that same section then that would be good value and id likely buy more.

Since this wasnt included it would cost me over £5000 just to get all the relevant maps for just ironstone mines in my area and we're only bloody talking about O.S. maps showing surface features.

I would happily pay say 30 quid for a specific region in PDF but again since it is now digital it should include more than one time period.

I am sure that these map sellers believe that they are only making an honest buck. I really hate to use the term Rip-Off but it is, in effect, a monopoly driven by the O/S.

Like most people, I don’t mind paying for an item where there is genuinely added-value, but the pricing of any one document (usually truncated) puts any serious collection of maps in the area where I live beyond my pocket.

When I was a student I remember trotting along to Stamford’s map shop in Long Acre (London) and buying 1.1250 and 1.2500 maps off their microfiche system. The price for an A2 sheet on feint Photostatic paper was an (eye-watering) £7 at the time! Things obviously haven’t changed but the technology has.

The trick with things on that photostatic paper is to do a copy on a plain paper copier as soon as you can. It produces a better image than the original!

A good BGS 1,10,560 6in to a mile is around £85 today,

Good detailed maps,showing all seams,faults etc,but still dont show every hole in the ground.

While I can understand the disappointment in having a very handy facility withdrawn from a web site, I think you have to stand back and account that old-maps.co.uk is a commercial web site. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of selling such data. I've not used the old maps site for sometime but you can just see information on the current max zoom level.

The problem is of course is that all this current technology becomes a victim of its own success. Those of us who know and use other technologies to enhance or access services can cause problems to those who provide those services. In this case if say you want to use the enhanced zoom feature and then do screen grabs which then can be re-assembled in a graphics package to produce a larger map of what you need then old-maps have lost a sale and you have broken the terms of the End User License.

Another possibility may be that according to the FAQs on the old-maps website, the enhanced zoom facility uses Flash. Now that is a no-no to iPad/iPhone users. OS Openspace are in the process of updating code for both iOS and HTML5. This could be a result of that.

http://maps.cheshire.gov.uk/tithemaps/ 
The view port is not as big as the old-maps site but if you're just browsing they are adequate and of course its free, not all in one place but free nevertheless.
What's more the Cheshire one has aerials from 1970, Tithe maps etc, very useful site.

Perhaps we should have another thread which just gives links to all Council/County web sites that have the map facility?

There are alternatives out there.

http://gis.durham.gov.uk/website/miner/placeGISSearch.jsp?SEARCHLAYER=FEAT.GISDBA.SETTLEPOINT&SEARCHCOLUMN=NAME&SEARCHMAPS=A 

This one is allegedly for Durham and the search is fixed to places there, but it lets you scroll all the way through Cleveland before cutting off around Staithes in the South and way up into Northumbria in the North.

http://mapping.cornwall.gov.uk/website/ccmap/ 
gives modern mapping for Cornwall, zooms in to largest scale OS mapping.
Cornwall Council do have digital early mapping but I havn't found how to access that.

The Old-Maps site states that:

"All map scales are free to view on-line and all can be purchased as electronic images, prints or pre-framed prints."

and also:

"...the home of the digital Historical Map Archive for mainland Britain. Part of the historic joint venture with Ordnance Survey..."

which I rather took to mean feel free to use the maps and purchase if you wish.

So now it is no longer a well functioning digital archive, but Landmark have kept it as a money maker. If they didn't want people using it for free, they shouldn't have pitched it like that.

The Old-Maps site states that:

"All map scales are free to view on-line and all can be purchased as electronic images, prints or pre-framed prints."

and also:

"...the home of the digital Historical Map Archive for mainland Britain. Part of the historic joint venture with Ordnance Survey..."

which I rather took to mean feel free to use the maps and purchase if you wish.

So now it is no longer a well functioning digital archive, but Landmark have kept it as a money maker. If they didn't want people using it for free, they shouldn't have pitched it like that.

Well, I suppose the first statement is still true, the maps are all free to view, but through a small window....

Let's hope that it is just a result of a coding change - one of my colleagues also suggested that the limitations and non-portability of FLash might be the cause - and that the enhanced view will reappear.

Cheers all

Grahami

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Does Old-map have to pay a license fee to O.S for the historic map data or is it available for free as is current data from Open space? I have tried to look into this but didn't get very far!
If it is available for free maybe a 'clever person' on this site could write a script (or use old-maps HTML source code) to have this as a members only resource? I would also be willing to pay a fee as would others if a small licence fee was required for limited use.
What do you think? :tongue:

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The fact that the interface is slow and clunky makes it more likely that someone will scrape, stitch and view offline rather than view in situ. I remember the days of 2x8 tile viewing in multimap back in the day. Now it's not worth it, you'd just view on demand in Bing maps or the like.

I've mailed the OS OpenData Team re: old OS maps late 1800s. Assuming they get back to me what would be the best year/scale to go for? I'm not expecting them to be free but a small service charge for map serving through the OS OpenSpace API could be possible, its worth asking !!!

I've already done some work on a mash-up format but there would be further work to do as the OS maps before 1940 used the Cassini projection, used as is there is no problem but it would be nice to serve then against modern OS/satellite data.

Peter.

If every body gets a different area map you could always do a swap and keep the cost down? :sneaky:

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I've mailed the OS OpenData Team re: old OS maps late 1800s. Assuming they get back to me what would be the best year/scale to go for?

First edition (circa 1885 to 1890) 25 inch would be my choice. Failing that any (of the three early) 25 inch maps. 6 inch do not show enough detail.

In Cornwall, the 1888 6" show pretty much the same detail as the 25". Some of the 190? 2nd edition are better than the first. As far as I'm concerned, having both series of 6" maps is sufficient for my needs, which is locating holes accurately.

" which is locating holes accurately"

I wish Cornwall Council would reinstate the shaft database online! It seemed to be removed for no reason, I can understand if they couldn't afford to keep it updated, but couldn't have cost much to keep it online.

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Are you talking about the protected shafts mappy things?

I think I ripped them off and may have copies somewhere.

Failing that, the wayback machine is handy.

You can even see all the old pictures which got deleted due to the excitement they caused on the internet! (mine-explorer)