ONE KINGDOM, 116 COUNTIES AND 17,000 SHEETS. The First Edition Ordnance Survey Six-Inch Map.

by Ifan D.H. Shepherd and Steve Chilton.

The price is for Charles Close Society members only before 1st June 2025 and is £30.00, which includes UK postage & packing. International purchases by members will include additional associated postage & packing. After 1st June the price will rise to £40.00.

Expected publication date is July 2025. Only a limited number of copies will be printed. Order yours now at the special pre-publication price!

The six-inch map of Ireland was a hugely ambitious project for the Ordnance Survey to undertake in 1824, and as work went on, so the project became yet more ambitious. What had started as the recording of basic topography for a one-inch map plus some administrative boundaries, estimated to take eight years, developed into a fully-fledged map of every detail that could be mapped within the limitations of scale, which took over twenty years. Then, as completion of Ireland came into sight in 1840, the six-inch came to Great Britain. The ‘first edition’ six-inch was eventually completed in the early 1890s, albeit in a form somewhat different from that of earlier years. It was the Ordnance Survey’s first excursion into what today would be called ‘big data’, and it remained the largest scale at which the whole of the British Isles would be mapped.

This is the first extended study of the six-inch, and has been over fifteen years in preparation. It is copiously illustrated.

The authors:
Ifan Shepherd is Emeritus Professor of GeoBusiness at Middlesex University, London
Steve Chilton is former Educational Development Manager at Middlesex University, London

448 pages, plus 16 pages of colour plates, A4 size.