You could say it started because of the French. The turmoil caused by their revolution got the British military worried about the possibility of an invasion, so maps of the ‘invasion coast’ (beginning with Kent in 1801) were produced. Hence the name ‘Ordnance Survey’. Until the 1960s every director general of the agency held an army rank.
The first five-mile baseline from which everything was measured had been laid out earlier by Major-General William Roy, its two ends marked by cannons stuck in the ground. Coincidentally one of these lay just outside what is now Heathrow. It’s still there, near the junction of Northern Perimeter Road and Nene Road. Searching for it once, I asked a planespotter if he knew where it was. He gave me a look that said: ‘You nerd.’ Which I found a tad rich.
There has always been a magic about OS maps.
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