MILITARY MAPS: THE ONE INCH SERIES OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

Roger Hellyer and Richard Oliver, 2004.

294 pages, including 16 colour plates, hardback, A4.

Military maps contains listings by Roger Hellyer of all the gridded one-inch military map series of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and, since the second world war, Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is organised in two completely separate sections, the first describing those series carrying the War Office Cassini Grid, the second those carrying the National Grids of Great Britain and Ireland. There is a special section describing the military mapping of London in each part of the book.

Richard Oliver's essay unifies the whole, bringing us first to the point where in the 1920s the War Office was provided with its own separate set of plates for the one-inch map. It then describes how civilian and military versions of the map diverge, reaching perhaps their widest point of separation in War Revision, then Second War Revision, then gradually come together again as National Grid one-inch mapping develops, finally to reunite in the present 1:50,000 Landranger. The history of one-inch military mapping in Ireland and later Northern Ireland is similarly described.

The book is graphically illustrated by sixteen colour plates, eight monochrome plates, and seven index diagrams designed by Chris Higley. It has appendices including previously unpublished tables showing editions of GSGS 3907 and 3908, also sales copies, civilian printers and military printing units. This is supplemented by a concordance of military map numbers, a chronology, a bibliography and a diagram briefly showing the organisation of Military Survey, its predecessors and its successors, from 1791 to the present day.