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Government Boundary Mapping Policy and the Knowledge Apparatus of the British State, 1841–1889

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2013

DAVID FLETCHER
DAVID FLETCHER*
Affiliation:
London Metropolitan University
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Journal of Policy History , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 512 - 537
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Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

NOTES

1. See, for example, Eastwood, David, “‘Amplifying the Province of the Legislature’: The Flow of Information and the English State in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Historical Research 62 (1989): 276–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. This article concentrates on England and Wales: Scotland and Ireland had different survey histories.

3. “An Act to authorise and facilitate the completion of a survey of Great Britain, Berwick upon Tweed and the Isle of Man,” known as, and referred to subsequently, as the Ordnance Survey Act, 4 and 5 Vict., c. 30.

4. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State (New Haven, 1998), 2.

5. Ibid., 6.

6. As will be shown, collecting much topographic data that was not always published on the maps.

7. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (London, 1835–40), vol. 1, chap. 5.

8. Eastwood, “Amplifying the Province of the Legislature,” 276.

9. Edward Higgs, The Information State in England: The Central Collection of Information on Citizens since 1500 (Basingstoke, 2004), 21. See also Jacques Revel, “Knowledge of the Territory,” Science in Context 4 (1991): 133–61, for an examination of the role of acquiring knowledge over territory as a means of controlling it in the context of France.

10. Higgs, The Information State, 85. See also Fletcher, David, “The Territorial Foundations of the Early Nineteenth-Century Census in England,” Historical Research 81 (2008): 100–122.Google Scholar

11. Higgs, The Information State, 35.

12. See Giddens, Anthony, The Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism: Power, Property, and the State (London, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Biggs, Michael, “Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State Formation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (1999): 374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Biggs, Putting the State on the Map, 388.

15. Harley, J. B., “Maps, Knowledge, and Power,” in The Iconography of Landscape, ed. Cosgrove, D. and Daniels, S.(Cambridge, 1988), 279.Google Scholar

16. Harley, “Maps, Knowledge, and Power,” 279.

17. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (London, 1977).

18. Edney, Matthew H., Mapping and Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago, 1997), 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Brotton, Jeremy, Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (London, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Cosgrove, Denis, Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an exploration of the implications for global power relations of conceiving and representing the Earth through different kinds of cartographic depiction. Klinghoffer, Arthur J., The Power of Projections: How Maps Reflect Global Politics and History (Westport, Conn., 2006)Google Scholar, also provides useful context.

20. Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago, 1991).

21. Buisseret, David, Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 1992).Google Scholar

22. Kain, Roger J. P. and Baigent, Elizabeth, The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State: A History of Property Mapping (Chicago, 1992), 344.Google Scholar

23. Harley, “Maps, Knowledge, and Power,” 281.

24. For a fuller account, see David Fletcher, “The Ordnance Survey’s Nineteenth-Century Boundary Survey: Context, Characteristics and Impact,” Imago Mundi 51 (1999): 131–46.

25. See Colonel Sir Charles Close, The Early Years of the Ordnance Survey (Newton Abbot, reprinted 1969; originally published 1926).

26. See J. H. Andrews, A Paper Landscape: The Ordnance Survey in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, 2nd ed. (Dublin, 2002); Townlands were landed property units, varying greatly in size but with an average of about 300 acres.

27. Richard Oliver, The Ordnance Survey in Great Britain, 1835–1870 (Ph.D. diss., University of Sussex, 1985), 54.

28. For a poignant perspective on the Irish survey, see Brian Friel, Translations (London, 1981), a play about the rendering of local Gaelic place-names into English. It might be added that perceptions of the intrusiveness of the Irish survey may have depended on its tax implications for each individual.

29. The National Plans, Ordnance Survey Professional Paper New Series, No. 16, by Brigadier H. St. J. L. Winterbotham (London, 1934), 52.

30. Ordnance Survey Act, 1841.

31. Owen, Tim and Pilbeam, Elaine, Ordnance Survey: Map Makers to Britain since 1791 (London, 1992), 44.Google Scholar

32. Burns, Arthur and Innes, Joanna, eds., Rethinking the Age of Reform: Britain, 1780–1850 (Cambridge, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. N. J. G. Pounds, A History of the English Parish (Cambridge, 2000). The parish evolved historically until by the thirteenth century a fairly settled territorial network of parishes covered England, each having its own priest, parson, or other ecclesiastical incumbent.

34. John Clare: The Parish: A Satire, ed. Eric Robinson (Harmondsworth, 1985).

35. K. L. French, The Parish in English Life, 1400–1600 (Manchester, 1997), 3.

36. See Winchester, Angus J. L., “Parish, Township, and Tithing: Landscapes of Local Administration in England Before the Nineteenth Century,” The Local Historian 27 (1997): 3–17.Google Scholar

37. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The Development of English Local Government, 1689–1835 (London, 1963 ed.).

38. Royal Sanitary Commission, Minutes of Evidence, QQ. (1810–12): 98. Quoted in V. D. Lipman, Local Government Areas, 1834–1945 (Oxford, 1949).

39. Thus parishes tended to be private creations of local landowners, townships reflected settlement and land-use patterns, and manors, though usually originally royal grants, came to be traded as property.

40. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The Parish and the County (London, 1963 ed.), 5.

41. Poor Relief Act, 1601, 43 Eliz. I, c. 2.

42. Where boundary records were made, they often simply recorded in writing the act of perambulation on the ground and as such merely shadowed local practice and knowledge. This kind of record most commonly survives among parish chest deposits in county record offices. See also P. Seed, Ceremonies of Possession (Cambridge, 1995), for an examination of parish boundary perambulations.

43. For a discussion of the significance of parish boundaries in the period immediately before the Ordnance Survey, see Fletcher, David, “The Parish Boundary: A Social Phenomenon in Hanoverian England,” Rural History 14 (2003): 177–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. Webb, The Parish and the County, 5.

45. For a discussion of the development of map-consciousness, see Fletcher, David, The Emergence of Estate Maps: Christ Church, Oxford, 1600–1840 (Oxford, 1995).Google Scholar

46. Recent large-scale mapping that might have recorded parish boundaries before the Ordnance Survey included most notably enclosure and tithe maps. Neither kind of map covered the whole country; neither was uniform in appearance or quality.

47. Poor Law Board to G. E. Trevelyan at the Treasury, 1 April 1848, in file 16699 in The National Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter TNA) T1/5381.

48. George Graham to G. E. Trevelyan, 10 January 1848, in file 16699 in TNA, T1/5381.

49. Ordnance Survey Act, section 1.

50. For instance, the unauthorized removal or defacing of any boundary marker set up in accordance with the Act made the offender liable of a fine up to the then-high sum of ten pounds.

51. Ordnance Survey Act, section 2. Such powers were not entirely new as the Tithe Commutation and Parochial Assessment Acts of 1836 had given statutory powers of entry to mapmakers. An Act for the Commutation of Tithes in England and Wales, 6 and 7 Will. IV c. 71 (1836); and An Act to Regulate Parochial Assessments, 6 and 7 Will IV c. 96 (1836).

52. Ordnance Survey Act, section 1. The term Clerk of the Peace is shorthand for “Churchwarden, parochial or any public officer, of any County, Ward, Parish, Hundred, Wapentake, Division, or Districts in England . . .”

53. Ordnance Survey Act, section 4.

54. Ordnance Survey Act, section 12.

55. Ordnance Survey Act, section 12.

56. This article principally examines the survey in England and Wales; practice varied in Scotland.

57. See Oliver, Richard, Ordnance Survey Maps: A Concise Guide for Historians, 2nd ed. (London, 2005)Google Scholar, for details on county survey and revision dates.

58. British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter BPP), 1812, XI, Abstract of answers and returns (1811 Census).

59. TNA, OS 26.

60. Nearly 13,000 Boundary Remark Books were produced, indicating the scale of the operation.

61. TNA, OS 23.

62. TNA, OS 23/15. Parish Name Book, Appleshaw Parish, Hampshire, 1868–35.

63. Also it is asked, inter alia, to what manor the parish or township belongs, to whom tithes are paid, to whom are church, poor, highway, and county rates paid, and whether there are any extraparochial lands.

64. TNA, OS 29.

65. TNA, OS 29/148, Journal of Inspection, parishes in west Kent, 1867.

66. TNA, OS 29/97, Journal of Inspection, Stockton District, 1853. The Notice was Ordnance Survey standard form No. 173.

67. TNA, OS 29/148, Journal of Inspection, parts of west Kent, 1867.

68. TNA, OS 29/306, Journal of Inspection, Bradford District, Yorkshire, 1847.

69. In uncultivated areas, the basic scale was 1:10,560, and in towns with a population over 4,000 the scale was usually 1:500.

70. Booth, J. R. S., Public Boundaries and Ordnance Survey, 1840–1980 (Southampton, 1980), 394Google Scholar. Booth was a former superintendent of the Ordnance Survey Boundaries Department.

71. Ordnance Survey Lancashire Sheet 16, six inches to one mile, surveyed in 1846–47. Copy at British Library.

72. Extra-Parochial Places Act, 1857 (20 Vict. c. 19), and the Divided Parishes and Poor Law Amendment Acts; 1876 (39 and 40 Vict. c. 61) and 1882 (45 and 46 Vict. c. 58).

73. TNA, T1/15938, Treasury Minutes, 9 April 1879.

74. The aggregation of working boundary documents was referred to internally by the Ordnance Survey as the Boundary Record Library.

75. TNA, OS 24.

76. TNA, OS 24/252, Hollingbourn Poor Law Union File, 1886–87.

77. TNA, OS 24/122, Cerne Poor Law Union File, 1884–85.

78. TNA, OS 24/280, Lunesdale Poor Law Union File, 1886–94.

79. TNA, OS 26/11057, Boundary Remark Book, Highworth and Blunsdon St. Andrew, Wiltshire, 1872.

80. Delano-Smith, Catherine and Kain, Roger J. P., English Maps: A History (London, 1999).Google Scholar

81. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates: Third Series, vol. 56, col. 529–33, on the Survey Bill, 11 February 1841. Vivian was master-general of the Ordnance, and thus the minister responsible for the Ordnance Survey, not a disinterested MP.

82. BPP, 1890, LVIII, 667, Report of the Progress of the Ordnance Survey to the 31st December 1889, 15. Also in 1884, two Ordnance Survey officers were temporarily appointed as inspectors to assist in holding inquiries under the Divided Parishes Acts.

83. Major Dawson, R. E., to the Registrar General, 20 July 1852, reproduced in the report for the 1851 Census Abstract, BPP, 1852–53, LXXXV, clvii. Dawson was First Assistant Tithe Commissioner and cartographic adviser to several government departments, including advising the Treasury on the best scale of mapping.

84. Gladstone Papers, British Library, Add. Ms. 44333, fols. 69–71, 9 December 1853.

85. Lipman, Local Government Areas. Even unions were based on aggregations of parishes and townships.

86. 1811 Census, xiii.

87. See Oliver, Ordnance Survey Maps, and J. B. Harley, The Ordnance Survey and Land-Use Mapping, Historical Geography Research Series, No. 2 (Norwich, 1979).

88. As noted, notices of public exhibitions of boundary sketch maps requested that local property owners bring their own maps as corroborative evidence of public boundaries.

89. TNA, OS 26/9771. Boundary Remark Book, Great Glemham parish, Suffolk, 1880.

90. TNA, OS 29/97, Journal of Inspection, Stockton District, 1853. Press cutting of Notice printed in The Durham Advertiser, 19 August 1853.

91. TNA, OS 26/11810, Boundary Remark Book for Yorkshire sheets 253 and 254, dated 1888.

92. TNA, OS 26/1774, Boundary Remark Book, Penrith Parish, Cumberland, 1855.

93. TNA, OS 29/158, Journal of Inspection No. 20 Lancashire, 1892,

94. For an excellent discussion of the role of the Land Registry and its relations with the Ordnance Survey, see Geraldine Beech, “Cartography and the State: The British Land Registry Experience,” Journal of the Society of Archivists 9 (1998): 190–96.

95. See also Sweeney, C. J. and Simpson, J. A., “The Ordnance Survey and Land Registration,” Cartographic Journal 133 (1967): 10–23.Google Scholar

96. BPP, 1857 (147, session 2) XXVII, 309, Report on the Ordnance Survey of the United Kingdom for 1855–56, 24.

97. Ibid., 22.

98. Ibid., 26.

99. TNA, MH 19/171, Poor Law Board, correspondence with Ordnance Survey, 1835–92, dated 10 January 1880. Indeed, in 1888 Major-General R. Owen Jones acted as chief assistant commissioner and secretary to the Local Government Boundary Commission.

100. TNA, MH 19/171, 8 November 1871.

101. TNA, MH 19/171, 8 April 1873.

102. BPP, 1873 (308), VIII, 1. Report from the Select Committee on Boundaries of Parishes, Unions and Counties.

103. TNA, OS 1/2/1, 13 February 1871. Committee to Inquire into the Progress of the Ordnance Survey.

104. Oliver, The Ordnance Survey in Great Britain.

105. Parsons, E. J. S., “The Scales Dispute–Henry James 1854–1863,” in Seymour, W. A., ed., A History of the Ordnance Survey (Folkestone, 1980), 134.Google Scholar

106. See Maltbie, Milo Roy, “English Local Government of To-day: A Study of the Relations of Central and Local Government,” Studies in History, Economics and Public Law 9 (1897): 18Google Scholar. He argues that in England at the start of the nineteenth century, anything that hinted at centralization or despotism was fiercely resisted.

107. Report from the Select Committee on Boundaries . . . , 209. Perhaps typically for the time, the simplicity and symmetry of the French local government system is contrasted unfavorably with Britain.