Treasure Trove of Classic Map Plates

On Friday, David Jamieson (Geo Librarian/Collins Archivist) and myself spent a couple of hours in a treasure trove of maps, Christmas had come early as we examined the riches on display in this cartographic wonderland. We spent our time extracting all the flat sheets needed to create the landmark Times Mid-Century Atlas and the Bartholomew Survey Atlas of England & Wales.

The Times Atlas of the World, Mid–Century Edition was a completely new atlas. It was published in 5 volumes, between 1955-59 because of the long production times involved in the painstaking work of compiling the detailed maps. The volumes were arranged in continental groupings with volume III, North Europe, coming out first, followed by another volume each year. It had 122 coloured, double page map plates and a comprehensive index of over 200,000 names. 25,000 copies were printed at the published price of £5-5s-0d per volume. See the Times Atlases website Heritage pages for further detail as map plates.

Bartholomew Survey Atlas of England & Wales (1939) was printed on heavy-duty paper, standard sheet size, 24 inches (61 cm) across by 18.3 inches (46.5 cm) mostly in landscape format. The atlas plates comprise 10 maps showing the geographical features of England & Wales as a whole; 67 sheets showing the countries at a scale of two miles to one inch (these have very attractive relief shading and clearly show the road and rail network, and the extent of urban development, between the World Wars) and 4 sheets showing the main cities at a larger scale.

The individual map plates for these atlases are all original Bartholomew printing from their Edinburgh Geographical Institute. They look as fresh as the day they were printed. All individual plate for these atlases and others can be ordered through R P A Smith’s website, they are superb for framing and make great gifts. R P A Smith also has nearly 100 street plans available to order from his website, covering about 650 towns and villages in Scotland.