Monday, April 16, 2018

Exploring the History of Scotland


Pastmap is an interactive map which can help you explore the historic buildings, archaeology and landscapes of Scotland. The map has been created by Historic Environment Scotland to help the public discover more about Scottish history and to help them visit the country's historic sites and buildings.

The map side-panel includes a number of history layers which can be added to the map. These include the locations of listed buildings, conservation areas, battlefield sites, scheduled monuments and gardens and designed landscapes. The side-panel also includes a number of map layers. These include vintage Ordnance Survey maps and aerial imagery of Scotland, on which you can overlay the historical locations.


If you are interested in vintage maps of Scotland then you should also pay a visit to the online Map Collections division of the National Library of Scotland. The National Library of Scotland (NLS) has digitized thousands of old historical Scottish maps.

Some of the NLS's digitized maps have been used by the University of Glasgow to show the routes of Robert Burns’s tours in the Highlands and Borders of Scotland. The Maps of Robert Burns’s Tours of the Highlands and Borders of Scotland use vintage map tiles of Scotland from the library's map collection.

For example the Robert Burns’s Tour of the Highlands, 25th August – 16th September 1787 map features an interactive route of part of Robert Burns' tour overlaid on a vintage 1815 map of Scotland. In this interactive route map you can click on each of the way-points displayed on the map to read what Burns had to say about the places he visited during this part of his tour of the Highlands.

No comments: