Ordnance Survey 1:500 (10.56 feet to 1 mile) Town Plans

The largest scale Ordnance Survey mapping available for Croydon is at the 1:500 scale. Twenty-eight plans at this scale, surveyed in 1868, were published (apparently in 1870) with some reprints and revisions in later years. A second edition of the same 28 sheets was surveyed in 1894-95, and published in 1896. Only the then built-up areas were surveyed and published, not the entire parish (later, borough.)

The very large scale allows the representation of great detail, including for example the internal divisions and uses of the ground floors of some public buildings (see, for example, the 1^st edition representation of West Croydon Railway Station). Wells, lamp-posts, true-to-scale dimensions and exact outlines of buildings, etc, are shewn.

Each of the Croydon sheets represents 1/25^th of the area depicted in Surrey county sheetlines 1:2,500 (the 25-inch) plans 14(6) and 14(10), although of the 50 possible sheets only 28 were published. The area of land represented on each 1:500 sheet is of course very small, each sheet representing a rectangle of land measuring 520.45 yards east west, and 352 yards north south.

The first editions were issued coloured, with minimal marginal publishing information. Uncoloured and later versions of these generally have marginal typescript stating date of survey (1868), date of publication (1870), and dates of reprinting.

The second edition sheets had minimal or no colouring, but dates of re-survey and publication appear in the lower margins.

The total coverage, in 28 sheets, is confirmed by the marginal continuation sheet details present (or not) in the north, east, south, and west margins of each published sheet.

The area covered at this scale extends from Whitehorse Road and part of the Selhurst railways triangle southwards to the junction of South End and Southbridge Road. To the west, Duppas Hill and Old Town are included. To the east, a small area east of the main Brighton Railway line is represented, including the former Brickwood House, parts of Park Hill, and Coombe Cliffe.

Croydon Public Libraries' Local Studies Library has a good but incomplete set of the 1^st edition sheets (with more than one publishing state often held), and a less complete set of the 2^nd edition. The Croydon Natural History & Scientific Society's Library holds only nine sheets of the 2^nd edition.

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History of the Ordnance Survey 1:500 Town Plans series

The Ordnance Survey's (1954) description of its large-scale plans states as follows:

• During the period 1843 - 1894 the Ordnance Survey produced three series of town plans:- plans at the scale of 5 feet to 1 mile, or 1/1056; plans at the scale of 10 feet to 1 mile, or 1/528; and plans at the scale of 1/500.
• The first town plan produced was of St. Helens at a scale of 1/1056 in 1844. This scale was the standard at which towns were surveyed until 1855. After that date a scale of 1/500 was adopted.
• The town plans at a scale of 1/528 belonged to a series prepared as a consequence of the Health of Towns Act of 1841, and were paid for by the municipality concerned.
• In 1894 the Treasury restricted the scales of survey to be done by the Ordnance Survey to scales of 1/2500 and smaller. Any local authorities, however, could order surveys at larger scales provided that they paid for them, but only a few towns (16) made use of this concession.
• All these plans are obsolete or obsolescent …

Richard Oliver (1993) supplies more detail:

The 1:500 scale was introduced in 1855, and by 1895 it covered most towns over about 4000 population at the time of the survey. (Some of the others were mapped at 1:1056 or 1:528). The usual practice was to map towns at this scale as part of the 1:2500 survey of the surrounding country, but a few towns were mapped in advance on a repayment basis. Very few towns were mapped more than once at this scale, and none have been since 1910. Unlike most smaller scales, partial topographical revision of individual 1:500 sheets appears to be unknown, though often the revisions at this scale covered only part of a town. Also, the detail shown might reflect the wishes of the town paying for the work. Full details of towns covered are given in Chapter 4 …

The 1:500 scale permits detail to be shown with a resolution of 6 inches (15 cm) or so; …

It was a development of the 1:528 mapping prepared in the early 1850s … and gives particular emphasis to such things as lamp posts, man holes, arched passages and minor building projections. Divisions between tenements are indicated, which is of great value if these maps are being used in conjunction with, say, detailed census returns, rating lists, or directories. …

The interior ground floor layout of public buildings is shown on those plans published before about 1880, sometimes with the functions of individual rooms given. Sometimes, too, on these earlier plans the functions of the various parts of larger industrial premises is indicated. It must be added that the content of the plans varies from one town to the next; on some, for example, railway track layouts are shown in full, whereas on others rails are not shown where they are roofed over; and the definition of public buildings, though including obvious instances such as churches, schools and town halls, sometimes includes and sometimes excludes banks and newspaper offices. Much of this information is omitted on smaller scales for reasons of space.

On some reprints of earlier plans the interiors of public buildings are omitted, and from the late 1870s the details of prisons and sometimes of barracks are omitted, both on new surveys and on reprints of older ones. As with all OS maps, there is no indication of the height of buildings, nor the presence of cellars; such information must be sought elsewhere.

Two styles of publication were employed for the 1:500; for some towns the plans were either engraved on copper or printed from zinc, with buildings hatched or stippled, and were uncoloured; for others the plans were printed from zinc and the buildings were coloured, red for those of masonry and grey for those of wood or iron construction, with glass buildings shown by cross-hatching. A few towns (e.g. Aberdeen, Dundee, and Glasgow) were published in a mixture of these styles. The zincographed coloured plans were also available uncoloured.

All sheets measure 37.472 inches west - east by 25.344 inches south-north (96.6 x 64.4 cm), and cover an area of 38.4 acres (15.54 ha) on the ground. With a very few early exceptions, the 1:500 sheet lines are divisions, numbered from 1 to 25, of 1:2500 county sheets, as shown on page 14, above [ie five rows, with five sheets in each row, numbered from top left to bottom right] … As the 1:2500 sheets are themselves divisions of 1:10,560 sheets, 1:500 sheets are numbered in the manner LXX.7.17. Graphic indexes were published for most of the towns mapped at this scale, and individual sheets were listed in pre-1918 OS catalogues. As a rule mapping extended to the edge of the built-up area, rather than to any municipal boundary, but there are some exceptions. The British Library Map Library has a very nearly complete set of these maps as first published, and the other legal deposit libraries have fairly complete sets, but many of the revisions at this scale were undertaken at the expense of local authorities, no copies were sent to the legal deposit libraries, and copies must usually be sought in local collections.

The 1868, 1894-95, and 1910-11 surveying was at 1:1250, 1:1056, 1:528 or 1:500; that of 1953−54 at 1:1250 subject to subsequent continuous revision.

The 1868 and 1894-95 1:500 plans were published by zincography in 28 sheets.

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References

OLIVER, Richard, 1991, Ordnance Survey of Great Britain. England and Wales. Indexes to the 1/2500 and 6-inch scale maps. Newtown (Montgomeryshire): David Archer: x + 118pp [ISBN 0-9517579-1-1][A facsimile reprint of the guide published by the OS in 1905/06, with an introduction by Richard Oliver][CNHSS]*

OLIVER, Richard, 1993, Ordnance Survey maps: a concise guide for historians. Charles Close Society: 192pp [ISBN 0-870598-13-X][CNHSS]

ORDNANCE SURVEY, 1954, A description of the Ordnance Survey large scale plans, Ordnance Survey: v + 21pp + x plates [CNHSS]

* [CNHSS] signifies that the item is held in the CNHSS library

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Last updated April 19^th 2003
Copyright © 2003 Croydon Natural History and Scientific Society Limited