Back to Historic Digimap Support
Historic Digimap contains the entire Landmark Historic Map Collection, a large collection of maps dating from 1846 up to the end of the 20th century. Different series and editions cover different areas of Great Britain. You can download data for use in other software packages, such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), drawing software and CAD.
Go to Digimap and click on login. Depending on your local setup you may be asked for a username and password. If your username or password is not recognised, follow the alternative login procedures link.
Non-academic access - please contact EDINA for details.
EDINA services are normally available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Any planned service breaks will be announced via the EDINA web site.
For more information, contact your local library, email edina@ed.ac.uk, or go to http://edina.ac.uk
The Series and Edition can be chosen from the drop down lists shown below. To view the areas covered by a dataset click on the view button; this updates the overview map.
With a Series and an Edition selected you can search for an area via various methods. This guide concentrates on finding an area using a modern place name or postcode.
The maps Series and Editions all have different coverage areas for Britain. You can use the Viewing historic map coverage box as a start point to search for a map, as it will show you what areas of Britain are covered by a particular dataset.
Historic Digimap allows searches by place name (using the OS 1:50,000 gazetteer) and by postcode, and by historical parishes or country.
The search will return a list of matching entries in the gazetteer. If you search for a term which is too broad, a large number of results will be returned. Place names will appear in alphabetical order but not all possible matches will be listed. A maximum of 200 results will be displayed.
This leads to a map tool showing a modern map centred on your chosen location.
This is the refine your search with a contemporary map page.
The tool panel to the left contains functions for refining your search and to display the historic map. A link to the context sensitive help, above the tools, provides in-depth guides to the features of this page.
The first set of drop-down menus can be used to alter the map series and edition displayed. The zoom and re-centre tools can used to pinpoint the area on the contemporary map for which you want to see the historic map. Drag Zoom allows you to select an area to focus on by dragging a box over it.
You can also change your map view using the eight arrows at the edges of the map to shift the view along a compass direction.
The Query Map tools can be used to View Map Details and View Historic Map. Just click on the tool, then on the map.
The map details tab shows which county map sheets cover the area in the display. By using the View Map Details tool, it is possible to retrieve information such as the publication date and tile information for specific points on the map. Selecting a point that is covered by more than one map series will bring up the details for all maps in that area.
The map displayed should now be a 1:2500 scale map from the original county series made between 1854 and 1901. The map in the viewer will zoom to the area around the point clicked on.
Find out more about the map with View Map Details. 
You can print the map shown in the main map view by using the Print current view button at the top right of the page. You can also give the map a title by typing it into the box. The map will print with your title at the top. 
The method above produces small area maps. You can download high quality TIFF images of an entire map sheet, or National Grid tiles of the map using the Download map data tab at the top of the page. They can be viewed and printed by many graphics packages (see Help). As they are geo-referenced, the images can be imported into a GIS for use with other map data. 
You may be presented with a number of maps if your area is made up of more than one map sheet.
Last updated: April 2007