Maps in The National Archives were used for central government purposes and only a small proportion have peoples’ names upon them. However there are many maps of interest to family and local historians.
The records of the Tithe Commission show where people were living in early Victorian times. The survey’s maps are often the earliest large-scale mapping of towns and villages, before published Ordnance Survey maps were available. Related text documents can provide names of farm owners and occupiers, and details of crop acreage and field names. See the Tithe Records research guide .
The Valuation Office record maps serve as the means of reference to more than 95,000 field books which contain descriptions of some nine million individual houses, farms and other properties. For more information see the Valuation Office Records: The Finance (1909-1910) Act research guide and the House history resource on our website.
The food emergency created by the Second World War led to the National Farm Survey. For more information see the National Farm Surveys of England and Wales, 1940-1943 research guide.
The enclosure movement of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries led to extensive redistribution of land, although enclosure did not take place everywhere. Some enclosure awards and maps are held by The National Archives; some are held by local record offices. For more information see the Enclosure Awards research guide.
The National Archives is not a place of deposit for successive editions of published Ordnance Survey mapping. If you want a specific sheet of a particular edition and scale, consult the appropriate local studies library or the British Library
or one of the other Legal Deposit Libraries.
The National Archives does hold records of the Ordnance Survey itself, documenting its work. As well as producing maps, the Ordnance Survey was from 1841 responsible for the Public Boundary Archive for Great Britain. This shows each change to a public boundary (county, parish, parliamentary and local government boundaries). For more information see our Ordnance Survey Records research guide.
In addition to these sources you can search the online Catalogue. See the published catalogue Maps and Plans in the Public Record Office, Volume 1, British Isles c1410-1860, (HMSO, London, 1967) and the book Maps for Family and Local History The Records of the Tithe, Valuation Office, and National Farm Surveys of England and Wales, 1836-1943, (second edition, Geraldine Beech and Rose Mitchell, The National Archives, 2004).
