.jpg)
Thecartography of Scotland is the history of surveying and creation of maps ofScotland. The earliest known depiction of the country in map form is that ofPtolemy, dated to the second century CE.[1] Surviving maps from the medieval era provide very little additional information and it is not until the mid-16th century that maps of Scotland show genuine improvement.
Anatlas produced byJoan Blaeu based onTimothy Pont's surveys of the late 16th century and early 17th century has been described as "one of Scotland's... greatest cartographic treasures"[2] and this outline continued to provide the basis for many 'new' maps until the end of the 18th century. More detailed map-making, primarily for military purposes, followed in the wake ofJacobite rising of 1745. In time the work ofWilliam Roy (1726–1790) led to the creation of theOrdnance Survey and the era of modern cartography with its diverse fuctions.
There are early written references to thegeography of Scotland. For example,Pytheas ofMassilia visitedBritain – probably sometime between 322 and 285 BC – and described it as triangular in shape, with a northern tip calledOrcas.[3] This may have referred toDunnet Head on mainland Scotland, from whichOrkney is visible.Tacitus wrote of his father-in-lawAgricola's expedition into what is now Scotland in the first century CE and bothPomponius Mela andPliny the Elder had previously referred to the islands surrounding Scotland.[3]
However, the earliest known map that has survived into the modern era is that of theHellenistic geographerClaudius Ptolemaeus better known asPtolemy (90–168) who produced a detailed eight-volume record, theGeographike Hyphegesis known as theGeography.[a] In the third part of theGeography, Ptolemy gives instructions on how to create maps both of the whole inhabited world (oikoumenē) and of the Roman provinces, including the necessarytopographic lists, and captions for the maps. Hisoikoumenē spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Blessed Islands in theAtlantic Ocean to the middle ofChina, and about 80 degrees of latitude fromShetland toTanzania on the east coast ofAfrica.[5]
Ptolemy's depiction of Scotland shows the country "turned on its side" so that the west coast is shown at the top and the east coast is in the southern position.[6] The outlying islands of theHebrides, Orkney and Shetland are simply scattered around what appears to be the north coast and there are few other details. Individual Hebridean islands are listed under Ireland.Islay is Ptolemy'sEpidion,Malaios isMull and hisScetis is presumed to beSkye.[7][8] Some settlements and Roman forts are mentioned on the mainland and a large forest is drawn at the centre. The outline of the east coast has an approxmation to reality (albeit shown to the south) but the other coastlines are evidently guesswork.[9] Breeze (2002) quotes J.J. Tierney who believed that Ptolemy's information about Scotland "was extremely poor"[10] and certainly the paucity of information included about Scotland, particularly north of theGreat Glen, is in contrast to the relative detail afforded for the island ofIreland.[11][b]
Nonetheless, this misshapen outline, which was created before Scotland even existed as a polity, stood largely uncorrected for about fourteen centuries.[13]
.jpg)
There is very little evidence of new maps of Scotland or of Scottish map-making until the mid-sixteenth century. The country figures in surviving examples of various early Christian world maps and inportolan charts but where it is shown it is "indistinct and always marginal".[14] An example is the Anglo-Saxon or Cotton map - an 11th centuryMappa mundi. Scotland appears as an imprecise mainland with scattered islands.[14] Similarly, Scotland has a "barely recognizable" shape and very little detail in a 13th centuryMatthew Paris map of Britain.[15] Scotland is similarly lacking in comparison to England in the 1360Gough Map of Great Britain. It is possible that the map was created to aidEdward I of England's military adventures in Scotland and almost nothing is shown for the area north of theMoray Firth.[16] The English chroniclerJohn Hardyng spent some considerable time in Scotland[17] but his 1457 map of the country is highly stylised and probably created with the aim of persuadingHenry VI of England to invade.[18]
_049.jpg)
In 1595 a map ofScotia Regnum, drawing on various earlier works, appeared inGerardus Mercator’sAtlas at a scale of circa 25 miles to the inch. This became the basis of maps of Scotland until the mid-seveteenth century.[19][c]
John Elder created a map of Scotland, now lost, for the English crown in 1543.[21]George Lily created a map of theBritish Isles that was published in Rome in 1546. The map is based in part on the Gough Map and includes improvements to the shape of the Scottish coastline.[22][21] In 1566 Scotland appeared on a map attributed to the Veronese map-maker Paolo Forlani and was in turn based partly on Lily’s earlier work.[21] English cartographerLaurence Nowell created a map at roughly the same time with about 600 place names identified.[23]
FrenchmanNicolas de Nicolay’schart of 1583 was in part based on a circumnavigation of the country in the 1540s and the work of hydrographer Alexander Lindsay.[24] This charter formed part of arutter and the circumnavigation on which it was partly based was commissioned (in contrast to several of the above) byJames V as a means of consolidating Scottish state authority rather than undermining it.[25]
Mercator’s 1595 map was thus able to make use of the Nicolay and Nowell maps, although by thenTimothy Pont had already commenced his influential work that would inform Scottish map-making in the following century.[26][d]
At this time various town plans of Scottish settlements also began to appear such asEdinburgh (Braun and Hogenberg, 1582) andSt Andrews (Geddie, 1580)[28] as did maps of battle sites and plans of military paraphernalia such as forts and their surrounding defences, in particular duringHenry VIII's "Rough Wooing".[29]
Pont (c. 1565 – c. 1615) was a Scottish minister,cartographer andtopographer. He was the first to produce a detailed map of Scotland and his maps are among the earliest surviving to show a European country in detail from an actual survey. He made a complete survey of all theshires andislands[e] of the kingdom, visiting remote districts and making drawings on the spot.[f] A contemporary described how Pont "personally surveyed...and added such cursory observations on the monuments of antiquity...as were proper for the furnishing out of future descriptions."[27] He died having almost completed his task andJames VI gave instructions that the maps should be purchased from and prepared for publication, but on account of the disorders of the time they were nearly forgotten. The maps were so "carelessly kept by his heirs that they were in great danger of destruction from moths and vermin".[27]Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet prevailed onRobert Gordon of Straloch to undertake their revision with a view to publication. The task of revision was completed by Gordon's son James and they were published inJoan Blaeu'sAtlas Novus, vol. v. Amsterdam, 1654[g] in 78 maps on 38 sheets.[32] This work has been described as "one of Scotland's - and early modern Europe's - greatest cartographic treasures".[2][h]
Although the maps provide considerable detail in some areas - there are 9,500 named places - some areas are treated cursorily.Sutherland for example is described as "extreem wildernes".[34] Furthermore, as was common at the time, Pont's work was an excerise inchorography, that is he was aiming to provide a sense of the character of place rather than precise measurement.[35] Nonetheless, map-making was an expensive undertaking and althoughJohn Adair was commissioned by the Scottish state to undertake a new survey in 1686 it was not completed and Blaeu's outline continued to provide the basis for many 'new' maps until the end of the 18th century.[36]
TheBoard of Ordnance was a Britain-wide institution which was re-organised in 1683[37] and which commenced a mapping of Scotland from a military point of view and using more modern surveying techniques. The maps include roads, battle sites, forts, castles and the earliest town plans ofInverness andPerth. Over 800 of the maps they produced survive to the present day.[38]
In the wake of the 1745Jacobite Rebellion a new military survey was entrusted toWilliam Roy, an officer of the Board of Ordnance in Scotland.[39] Roy stated that the government's intention was:
that a country, so very inacessible by nature should be thoroughly explored and laid open, by establishing military posts in its inmost recesses and carrying roads of communication to its remotest parts.[40]
A survey of the Highlands was completed in 1752 and of the Lowlands by 1755. The survey was produced at a scale of 1 inch to 1,000 yards (1:36,000)[41] and included "the Duke of Cumberland's Map", now held in theBritish Library.[42] Thereafter, work was curtailed by theSeven Years' War.[40]
The origins of theOrdnance Survey, which eventually took over from the Board of Ordnance, also lay in the aftermath of theJacobite rising of 1745.
In 1801, the first one-inch-to-the-mile (1:63,360 scale) map was published, detailing the county ofKent[43] although it was many years before work was completed in Scotland and the north of England.[44]
By 1846, the production of six-inch maps of Ireland was complete. This had led to a demand for similar treatment in England, and work was proceeding on extending the six-inch map to northern England, but only a three-inch scale for most of Scotland.[45]
In subsequent years numerous editions have appeared including:
The Ordnance Survey continue to be the state's map-making arm to the present day, although much of the mapping is now accessed digitally rather than on paper.[50]
Maps, once expensive and written in languages not accessible to ordinary people, are now ubiquitous and their uses very broad. Examples from the past and present include:
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Kingsford, Charles Lethbridge (1911). "Hardyng, John". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 948.