Ancient Britain Mapped
By GLYN DANIEL
CONTRARY to Napoleon's view—if indeed it was Napoleon who said so—an army does not march on its stomach. It marches on its maps. The Ordnance Sur- vey, like many another national survey, can really claim its origins in the needs of the operations of war. For it was the pacification of the Highlands after the '45 Rebellion that made necessary a reliable map, and out of this map the Ordnance Survey grew. But:even in those far-off days, and through the energy and initiative of William Roy, antiquities were being recorded and mapped. The Survey has carried on the tradition started by General Roy, and for a century and-a half it has been recording antiquities in one way or another. Indeed, it, is the only national survey which froni the beginning has been archaeo- logically minded. One has only to cross to France, where most of the current topographical State maps are unrevised copies of nineteenth-century surveys, and where the most reliable information about antiquities is to be found on the Michelin touring maps, to begin to appreciate the service we receive from our Ordnance Survey.
Of course some oddities have appeared on our Survey maps, like the cultivation-terraces, in the Eden Valley described mysteriously as the Hanging Walls of Mark Antony, and the strange name Heriri Mons (apparently a misreading of Speed's version of Eryri—the Welsh name of Snowdon) for the Roman fort of Tomen y Mur. But these were amusing exceptions. The archaeological work of the Survey in the nineteenth century was of a very high character. In 1920 0. G. S. Crawford was appointed as the Survey's first Archaeology Officer, and during his tenure of this post, from then until 1946, the Survey pro- duced a series of period maps of which 'the best known perhaps is the Map of Roman Britain, now in its third and revised edition.
Mr. C. W. Phillips succeeded Crawford as Archaeology Officer at the end of the war, and a map of Ancient Britain is one of the first products of this post-war regime at the Survey, where, following the recommendations of the Davidson Report of before the war, the archaeology branch has been enlarged to deal not only with period and special maps, but the constant revision of all the archaeological information on its large-scale topographical maps.
It was a happy and appropriate thought that in this Festival Year the Survey should -publish a map of the major visible antiquities of Great Britain older than the Norman Conquest.* The map is roughly at the scale of ten miles to an inch, and is divided into .two sheets, North and South, the dividing line being from the north end of the Isle of Man to the Yorkshire coast north of Scarborough. Modem topographical detail is printed in a faded form as the base of the map, and on this base are plotted
* Ancient Britain (Ordnance Survey, Chessington), 1951. Two sheets 6s. 9d. eaoh (folded, cloth. with introduction and list).
by various symbols the principal visible archaeological sites and monuments classified according to whether they belong to the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze or Early Iron Ages, the Roman Period, the Dark Ages, or are of uncertain age, or are Roman roads or frontier defences. Some of our museums are also marked in—like the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Farnham. There is also a full alphabetical list of about one thousand names —the sites marked on the maps—giving a short account of each site, the number of the Ordnance Survey one-inch sheet on which it will be found, and its National Grid reference.
The map is therefore of use to two kinds of people. First. the archaeologist—professional, amateur or student—who is con- stantly dealing with sites but is often not quite sure where they all are, will find the locational information he needs at a glance. Secondly its great value is to the ordinary tourist travelling around Britain, or spending a holiday in one part of Britain, the ordinary tourist interested in the non-functional aspects of the cultural landscape around him, and anxious to see and under- stand those traces of the past human occupation of this country which time and the hand of man have spared for us—in short the tourist looking for archaeological sights. Here he will see at once the most interesting, most obvious and most noteworthy surface antiquities in the area, or along the route, which interests him. He will not, in the majority of cases, be able to locate these antiquities directly from this small-scale map. For that he will need the one-inch Ordnance Survey maps on which these sites and monuments also appear. The close approach to the sites themselves, except for obvious and signposted antiquities like Stonehenge and Avebury and the Roliright Stones, should be carried out only with the aid of the one-inch sheets, and, very thoughtfully, an index of the one-inch series is printed-on the covers of these maps for convenience of reference.
One may criticise—every archaeologist will—the selection and rejection of sites in detail. To take Megalithic monuments alone, for example, it is surprising that the Spinster's Rock at Drew- steignton in Devon, Nympsfield in Gloucestershire, Trefignath and Barclodiad y Gawres -in Anglesey, and Samson's Bratfull in Cumberland have been excluded ; but everything could not be in, and, despite specialist carpings, the map contains an excellent and most representative selection of notable antiquities. The use of outworn categories like Neolithic, Bronze Age and Early Iron Age has necessarily involved some confusions and contradic- tions ; thus Bryn Celli Ddu is down as a Bronze Age monument while its near neighbour Bryn yr Hen Bobl is Neolithic, and while the burial chambers of Pembrokeshire are Neolithic those com- parable monuments at Trethevy and Zennor in Cornwall are put down as Bronze Age. But the present grotesque confusion of archaeological nomenclature is not the fault of the Ordnance Survey, which cannot be expected to be in advance of current archaeological usages. It is interesting to find Yspytty Cynfyn, near Aberystwyth, on the map as a Bronze Age site. It consists of five large stones built into the revetment wall of an embanked roughly circular churchyard, and was for long regarded as a classic instance of continuity in sacred sites from pagan to Christian times. When Mr. W. F. Grimes produced the Ordnance Survey's Map of Long Barrows and Megaliths in South Wales (1936), he decided that the contradictory early accounts of this monument, as well as its present appearance, made its authenticity as a prehistoric stone circle very doubtful. It is good to have it back on the map for, whatever its antiquity and original form—and I have sympathy with Mr. Grimes's doubts—it is a great archaeological curiosity and most worthy of a visit. And that is the greatest fascination of this map. It is an invitation to travel in Britain ; a catalogue of ancient delights that we may still see. All honour to men like General Roy and 0. G. S. Crawford who built up the tradition that made such a map as this possible. All power to the present archaeology branch of the Survey that has produced it. The taxpayer who complains bitterly of his taxes should open the folding sheets of Ancient Britain. Here, anyway, is some small recompense— and very cheap at the price.
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