19th Century maps

[stevetewk65]

Can anyone suggest a good website, resource etc for 19th century maps; specifically showing villages in the Dorchester area? I am visiting the town in a week or so and want to try and pinpoint exactly where various addresses showing on the 1851, 1861 are located.

Thanks
Steve

[stevetewk65]

sorry, I didnt see this first time through!

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,354448.0.html

[nanny jan]

Hi,

If you are visiting Dorchester then a trip to the Dorset History Centre might be useful for on-the-spot local information, maps etc.


Nanny Jan

[Hackstaple]

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~genmaps/

Wonderful site. If you do have any difficulty I have two sets of 19th century Gazetteers with every place in England and Wales listed.

[stevetewk65]

Thanks for the swift replies folks. I know where the villages I want to see are but was hoping to find something detailed down to 'house level' so that even if the buildings no longer exist I can at least view where they were! There is something very pleasurable in walking where one's ancestors actually walked - or is that just me? 

[Hackstaple]

For that you would need the large scale Ordnance Survey maps - 6 inches to the mile might just do. However, they did not exist in such a scale until 30 or 40 years after the dates you mention. In that period many houses would have been demolished, burned or collapsed and new ones built.

[Westy]

There is something very pleasurable in walking where one's ancestors actually walked - or is that just me? 

No I do it all the time and have found a lot in Dorchester and the surrounding villages. What I do is put the address into google maps which gives you an approx area then print it off and walk the street looking for numbers or finding an address or house name from the census (same census page or previous and/or next page) and follow it along. In Dorchester half the street was modern but you could see what the houses were like from some older one's not demolished but the numbers in the new bits were the same so you could judge where it was, another street was as it was on the 1851/61/71/81 census and my relative moved to various houses in the same street !! Another thing I like to do is to find a church where someone was married or christened and mostly the original font is still there where the ceremony took place and I can imagine the whole family stood around it.

cheers

[stevetewk65]

Back home and did all that Westy!
Sadly, i didnt find anything startling in the Dorchester records building and i didnt stumble upon a family gravestone at the churches I visited, but still thoroughly enjoyed my time in Dorset