Digitising the Inter-War Land Use Survey of Great Britain: a pilot project

During the 1930s, the Land-Utilisation Survey of Great Britain, directed by Professor L. Dudley Stamp, created a detailed record of the major land uses in England, Wales and southern Scotland. They published this information on a set of 169 map sheets, using Ordnance Survey 1” maps as a base, and displaying land uses via a colour overlay. The Ordnance Survey’s copyright in the 1920s base maps has long expired but copyright in the land use data belonged to Stamp and lasts for 70 years from his death in 1966. Stamp’s copyright passed to his assistant, who has given us verbal permission for the maps to be used in a not-for-profit project providing public access to the data. Scanning, geo-referencing, archiving and Internet dissemination are all feasible, despite the lack of a printed grid and coordinate system on the maps. The trials described in this report clearly show that it is possible to produce a good quality digital vector map from the paper maps of the First Land Utilisation Survey.