The Ordnance Survey and Archaeology, 1791-1960

Abstract

The object of this paper is to show how the Ordnance Survey is dealing with archaeology today. In order to give a just view of present practice it is necessary to begin by showing how archaeology became a regular feature of the Survey's work between 1791 and 1947. Although Great Britain is the only country in the world to give special attention to the showing of archaeology on its national plans no specific authority for this can be found. The Ordnance Survey Act of 1840 on which all work is based today is silent about it, and the only official notice it has had is the approval given to it in the Davidson Committee's Report of 1938 which set the stage for the Survey's work today. It is not possible to give any clear account of why, after the publication of the first i-inch O.S. map in 1801, a steadily increasing amount of well-observed archaeology began to appear on the original i-inch map series. Obviously there must have been general agreement that the survey of the countryside should include the delineation of all surveyable archaeological features which could be shown at this scale, even where they were not objects of great physical bulk and importance. Here we may perhaps see the prehistory of the Ordnance Survey at work, for General William Roy, whose infiuence was paramount in promoting the idea and practice of national survey, had a career in which many would regard his achievements as a field archaeologist as scarcely inferior to his work as a geodesist and surveyor. The frequent appearance of archaeological features on the pre-Ordnance Survey county maps of the eighteenth century reflected one of the interests of the stratum of society for which these maps were chiefly made and, with all their defects, they were in some degree a model for the more accurate productions of the Survey. The advice of the Royal Society was also important in determining the principles of the Survey in its earliest stage, and at that time it contained some of the leading archae? ologists in its Fellowship. Finally the early work was done in the age of the Romantic Revival so that the intellectual climate of the time cannot have been without infiuence. The hard fact remains, however, that although great progress was made in the showing of antiquities on the i-inch maps until 1825, ^ was tne beginning of the 6-inch survey of Ireland in that year which gave the practice great development and definition. In drawing up his instructions for this Survey Thomas Colby made elaborate provision for the investigation and survey of the field antiquities which abounded in Ireland, and success in showing them was further ensured by the work of John O'Donovan, the Survey's Irish language expert. Although first employed to