Old OS Map Symbols

[JohnB]

I've been looking at old OS maps of the area around the house I'm buying in NW Carmarthenshire. The 1891 and 1906 maps have this symbol on the surrounding fields:

I guess it's either marshy ground or rough ground. Part of it is now fields belonging to the adjoining farm, and some is now woodland that comes with the house. I've been told that blue marl clay was extracted from what is now the woodland, but I'm finding very little useful information on the web. I'm hoping the deeds will shed some light on the history.

I've tried to do a search for a key to the symbols, but have a painfully slow mobile internet connection that makes it difficult, so thought someone here might know.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

It is rough grassland, but it's from a larger scale map (possibly 1:10 000 or its Imperial equivalent?) than the ones (nowadays 1:50 000 and 1:25 000) that have a standard means of depiction.

 

[Tom]

Do either of these help?

http://www.old-maps.co.uk/HTMLPAGES/PDF/2500legend.pdf

http://www.old-maps.co.uk/HTMLPAGES/PDF/10560legend.pdf

 

[JohnB]

Thanks. I was looking at Old Maps earlier!! It looks like a mixture of rough pasture and furze, and no marshy stuff, so that's good.

I hope I can find some of the history of the site. All I've found so far is the 1891 census. There are the remains of a tramway in the wood that was obviously associated with the clay workings.

 

[Penners]

furze

That's interesting. I hadn't come across that word before, so I googled it. Wikipedia informed me that it's "Gorse, furze, furse or whin ".

Never heard of "whin" before, either. It's nice to learn old/alternative words for familiar items.

 

[biffvernon]

Whin? That's a sort of stone found oop north.

 

[worms]

In Scotland, "whin" is both a type of stone (granite, I think - in a rubble cottage, you often find it has whinstone lintels, and whindust is what you put on your drive to produce a fine, bonded gravel surface) and a spikey bush with yellow flowers (although it properly is gorse, you will find that people often don't differentiate between gorse and broom, and use the generic whins to describe both and like the term "furze" it is often more a generic "in the rough" sort of a descriptor).

 

[JohnB]

furze

That's interesting. I hadn't come across that word before, so I googled it. Wikipedia informed me that it's "Gorse, furze, furse or whin ".

Never heard of "whin" before, either. It's nice to learn old/alternative words for familiar items.

I had to look it up too. Didn't want to show my ignorance by translating it! Maybe I should have impressed everyone with my great knowledge instead .

It looks like the house was built on what was originally rough grazing, maybe common land? The map shows the land was unfenced along the road. I've found some history of the area, and it looks like the village it's on the edge of didn't exist until the mid 19th century. I'm hoping the deeds go back far enough to give me some history. So far I've only got back to the house existing on the 1889 OS map. I've asked my solicitor to confirm I'm actually going to get them. I was hoping we were exchanging contracts last Friday, but I'm still waiting for some last minute solicitor stuff to be finished :roll:

 

[JohnB]

Moving on in history, I've just received some of the deeds for this place I'm still trying to buy

.

What does the "Pt of 1945" mean? I know the number below it is the acreage. Is there any kind of register, or somewhere I can search online where I can find out further information? What I actually need is to find information about the land to the south of that surrounded by the red border, and just wondered if this might help.

As I mentioned before, the land surrounding the house was rough pasture and gorse, and unfenced along the road, on the 1891 OS map. Later on (according to what I've been told) the land on the south side was clay pits where blue marl was extracted. There is the remains of a narrow gauge tramway and the chassis of a wagon remaining. It is now woodland, that has been coppiced in the past. For reasons I don't want to go into here, I'm trying to trace the history of this piece of land.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

"Pt of" is an abbreviation of part of - ie., it's part of another parcel of land with the same number (in this case, 1945). I think the only way to find out where "1945" is, is to search the rest of that map sheet.

 

[JohnB]

I'd assumed the "Pt of" bit! It's the numbers I don't understand. It seems to be an extract from the 1906 1/2500 map, and shows the house and immediate surrounding area. The only numbers are the 1945 and 1946 shown. I've seen it on other maps.

The key to the 1/2500 maps refers to them as areas and says:
Every parcel is numbered thus..................27
Its area is given underneath in Acres, thus....4.370

But what is a parcel, and what does the number relate to? In this case the each parcel is partly within the boundaries of the site, and partly outside.

 

[JohnB]

I've found this description on Google Books. I assume that the numbers just mean that there are 1946 parcels of land on the map, and they don't relate to any kind of index.

But why is part of each parcel inside the boundary of the registered land, and part outside?

 

[Schoolmarm]

Change of ownership?


Division of large area for various reasons?



Lots of land and farms were owned by posh landowners and sublet to tenants.

 

[worms]

Is it not the field number?

Every field in UK has a field number on the Ministry of Agriculture files. Obviously these don't run from 1- several million, but (from memory) I think are up to four digits and based within the grid system. Often fields have been split or merged over the years and until the next renumbering exercise, they appear on the Ministry's farm maps as "Part 1465" etc. So confusingly, you can have a single field with several numbers or two fields each with the same number (I remember one occasion two fields that had a single number either side of a new trunk road).

So I would interpret your map as field 1945 has been split into three sections and each is labelled as Pt 1945, with the acreage of each.

 

[worms]

Actually, looking at it again, perhaps the top right one is pt 1948 so each of 1945 and 1948 have been split in two along the line of the title deed and this now gives the area of each of the fields that is in the new divided fields. I would imagine that a modern farm map would have resolved the numbering to reflect the new situation.

 

[MdB]

Looking at the old map of our house, we have a similar thing. Each of the local fields has a number and a size. As worms says, it looks like the fields around your potential house have been divided up without being renumbered hence the "part of" designation.

 

[biffvernon]

In Scotland, "whin" is both a type of stone (granite, I think - in a rubble cottage, you often find it has whinstone lintels, and whindust is what you put on your drive to produce a fine, bonded gravel surface) and a spikey bush with yellow flowers (although it properly is gorse, you will find that people often don't differentiate between gorse and broom, and use the generic whins to describe both and like the term "furze" it is often more a generic "in the rough" sort of a descriptor).

The trouble with words is that different folk in different localities use the same word for different things.
However.
The best known whin stone is the Whin Sill, a sill (geol. horizontal (ish) body of intrusive igneous rock) that stretches from Lindisfarne and the Farne Islands across Northumbria and forms, in part, the foundation of Hadrian's Wall. It is a basic intrusion some 295 million years old. Other basic intrusions, in the form of smaller sills and much more numerous dykes, occur over much of northern England and Scotland. It is a hard, dark coloured, crystalline rock, basalt if the crystals are very small, dolerite if more coarsely grained, dominated by the dark mafic minerals.
But it is definitely not granite, which is an acid, coarse grained intrusive rock of a pale colour as it is dominated by quartz and feldpars.

I was in Galloway recently where a lot of the old houses are of granite, a pale grey, sometimes pinkish. Whinstone also occurs locally but in less abundance. It is incorporated for decorative effect to make a dark contrast to the granite.

It is called whinstone because when you hit it with a hammer it goes Whinnnn. The right pieces cut the right way can be used as a fairly melodious glockenspiel.
Yes, it's also a name for gorse, as on th erough bits of the map.

 

[worms]

Biff,

Thanks for the correction. I think there is a tendency for anything that is too hard to cut or chisel through to be assumed (by us non-geologists) to be whinstone or granite, even when it may actually be neither and the same may also be true of "whin dust", which may bear little relationship to the actual stone.

 

[JohnB]

The 1891 1/2500 map shows the house and the small rectangular fields around it, surrounded on 3 sides by a large area of rough grazing and gorse. By 1906 the fields 1945 and 1946 have appeared, along with further small fields to the south. It suggests to me that the house didn't own any of the fields originally. The land to the south became clay pits at (I would guess) some time between the 1890s and the early 20th century. It's been woodland for some decades now.

So who owned the 1945 and 1946 fields originally? How/when did they get divided? Did the house owner originally own the fields and sold the southern parts, or did he buy the northern parts when they became available? It looks as though the house owner must have bought the land to the south sometime between 1967 and 1980ish. Or all this could be total rubbish!

The history of the site is starting to look pretty complex, and it will be fascinating investigating it if the sale goes ahead. The problem is that the documents are missing, and it's causing problems that I can't go into. As there is the remains of a tramway on the site, I've asked on a railway forum (I don't own an anorak ), and been given loads of useful contacts, but nothing I can deal with before Monday.

 

[worms]

Well, if I am correct that the new boundary on the map that you showed above was when the larger fields were first divided, then it might follow that this was when a piece of a larger estate was sold off: buildings & land together? I'm not clear what date that map was and how this tied in with the history that you outline. (If this is correct/possible then are there estate archives locally that might hold the details?)