Description
Reproduction of the 1815 William Smith Map. Exhibiting the collieries and mines, marshes and fen lands originally overflowed by the sea, and the varieties of soil according to variations in the Substrata.
We are delighted to be able to offer a reproduction of William Smith’s famous 1815 geological map of ‘England and Wales with part of Scotland’ (Series 53, issued between 2nd November 1815 and 17th December 1815). Smith’s 1815 map was the subject of Simon Winchester’s Map that Changed the World. This map was never published as a single sheet. The large size of the original map, and the size of the printing presses in the early 19th century, meant that it had to be published in fifteen sections, each folded into six ‘panels’. We have scanned the original panels held in the BGS Library, and digitally removed the joins. At its original scale of five miles to the inch, the map would have been eight feet long by six feet wide if it had ever been published as a single sheet. Our reproduction is published at half scale: ten miles to the inch, and is colour-matched to the original. The original maps are valuable and fragile; viewing is by appointment only. Now this beautiful half-scale reproduction means that Smith’s achievement can, at long last, be widely appreciated. The reproduction map size is 1330mm x 930mm (portrait)
Flat: 133cm x 93cm
