A Vision of Britain Through Time.

April 26, 2010 10:20 PM

A Vision of Britain Through Time Sections on Travel writing, Statistical Atlas, Historical maps and Places among others.
posted by mlis (10 comments total)

I adore sites like this. Thanks for posting!
posted by That's Numberwang! at 11:23 PM on April 26, 2010

A couple of years ago, I heard a talk about this site and how it might lose funding/hosting -- I'm glad to see that those fears never came true.

But I still haven't figured out how to download shapefiles for GIS from there -- I heard a rumous that it was possible.
posted by jb at 11:23 PM on April 26, 2010

A rumour. A rumous would be a very stange animal, possibly an ungulate.
posted by jb at 11:24 PM on April 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

Thanks for this post. Pleased to see Cobbett's Rural Rides there. Brought a battered old copy with me when I came to China to work in rural development, and found it to be a thought-provoking travel companion; great writing with a constant focus on human well-being and of course full of both points of comparison and contrast and reminders of familiar places while far away.
posted by Abiezer at 1:16 AM on April 27, 2010

Fascinating. I grew up in Bradford, which for the latter part of the Victorian era was the capital of the wool trade. Before that though, a lot of the local trade was in coal and iron. Bradford was a village rather than the city that mechanisation of the wool trade would very quickly turn it into. At school when we did all the "our role in the industrial revolution" stuff only wool got a mention. The West Riding section of the George Head has a great description of a major iron works in operation in Wibsey, which is actually that part of Bradford I'm from. I roamed every inch of Wibsey as a kid and you'd have no idea that place ever existed. I doubt you would have even a few years after that piece was written, so fast and great was the transformastion.

Thanks for posting this. Really cool.
posted by vbfg at 1:50 AM on April 27, 2010

Is it dead?
posted by pracowity at 2:52 AM on April 27, 2010

No! It's back.
posted by pracowity at 5:42 AM on April 27, 2010

I thought this was going to be about Connie Willis at first.
posted by Evilspork at 5:52 AM on April 27, 2010

This is one of the better and more comprehensive historical web mapping services I've come across – simply amazing.
posted by avocet at 5:55 AM on April 27, 2010

Wonderful, thank you.
posted by Markb at 9:04 AM on April 27, 2010