-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        The Brighton and Hove Historical Mapping Web Site
Date:   Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:17:05 +0100
From:   Timothy Langner <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To:
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*The Brighton and Hove Historical Mapping Web Site*

Hi there

As part of a masters dissertation at the University of Portsmouth, into
the spatial querying of historical maps online, I have created the above
historical mapping web site, hosted at:
http://tiger.iso.port.ac.uk:7785/www/geg50160.brightonandhove.maps.

The site allows users to:

    * View historical maps of Brighton and Hove;
    * Search these historical maps, using indexes complied from the
      original maps and/or other gazetteers from the same period;
    * Choose a location on a map and then find out what exists at that
      location on other maps;
    * Pan around the maps and change their scale.

The site is hosted in an Oracle database, using Oracle Spatial, with
Oracle's MapViewer being used to output the maps to the Web Site. The
original maps were georeferenced using ArcGIS. Although historical OS
maps of Brighton and Hove already exist and are available to students
through Edina, none of these were used to georeference the maps. In
order to keep the site out of copyright, I manually created a world
coordinate file using my own copy of OS 6" Sussex county series sheet,
LXVI, published 1880. Without a copy of this map, the work would have
been much more difficult to undertake. And were it no for the
contributions and help of people on the carto-soc mailing list, who
replied to a message I posted, I would not have known how to create the
coordinate file.

The projection itself, a Cassini county series projection, origin
located at Ditchling Beacon, was created using information complied by
Brian Adams and published in the extremely useful, Projections and
Origins: Collected Writings of Brian Adams (published by the Charles
Close society). In addition to that Russell Fox, retired OS librarian,
confirmed a query I had with the projection and Cliff J Mugnier, who has
also completed research into the country series projections, was helpful
too.

Once the database was created, additional work was completed using
MapInfo, as this allowed direct access the Oracle database tables.

I am intending to carry on the work and expand it once I finish my
course at the University of Portsmouth. If you would be interested in
find out more about this or collaborating on the project, then please
get in contact. The work will probably have to be transferred to an open
source solution as I am unable to afford the costs required to run the
site using Oracle. This will also affect how the maps might be
georeferenced in the future.

Due to the amount of work required, the site features 11 maps (12
images) covering the central area of Brighton. For those that know
Brighton this is roughly:

    * Church Street in the North;
    * Montpellier Road in the West;
    * The two piers in the South;
    * Rock Place in the East.

The maps include, amongst others:

    * The map from Edward Cobby's "the Brighthelmston Directory for 1799"
    * Hadlow's 'Brighton Hove and Preston' from Robertson's 1895
      "Delegates' Guide to Brighton"
    * Stanley Barnett's Graphia Street Plan of Brighton and Hove from
      c1931-1934
    * Stadtplan Von Brighton from 1941, which was by the rather long
      named: Generalstab des Heeres. Abteilung für Kriegskarten und
      Vermessungswesen  (IV. Militär-geographische) [translated as:
      General staff of the army. Department for war maps and surveyings.
      (IV. Military-Geographical)]

Please try out this new site and let me know what you think. Whilst I do
not have time to incorporate any changes into my work, I will keep a
record of all comments, suggestions and problems you may encounter.

Kind regards

Tim Langner