Elston Mapping Project – History of the Project

While collecting photographs Dave Sankey was being shown other items which were equally important to Elston’s heritage but which were outside his brief and which he did not have the time to take on board.  These often included maps of the village dating from various periods and in various scales.  It soon became evident that this was something that had been overlooked in the application, i.e. to show how Elston had evolved from its earliest beginnings as an Anglo Saxon settlement to today’s village. An appeal was therefore placed in the Parish Magazine for someone to collect and copy maps of all periods and mount them in a folio of at least A3, possible A2 size, so that they could be viewed at exhibitions.  We also wanted to do a Powerpoint presentation which would superimpose each new stage of development on what had gone before so that it would be possible to show an audience the same process and to make it more intelligible.  This would have to be built up from a series of digital images of individual maps and posed the question of uniformity of scale, as the presentation would be effective only if you could see on the same map what was being added in relation to what already existed.  

Jean Williamson, recently retired and possessing the necessary skills and software volunteered. Thereafter anyone finding maps would contact her.  She would also acquire maps from the Ordnance Survey and the County Archive in Nottingham.