The history of our geography can hold answers to present day trends and problems
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Mapping past and present
What is GB 1900?
GB1900 is the latest project to combine software and digitised maps to create the most detailed historical-geographical index ever compiled for Britain. It includes records of place names from the years around 1900 and could provide invaluable insights into present-day questions when combined with other data.
Professor Southall was inspired to create the resource after a Welsh project developed software specialised for analysing place names. He applied this to all of Britain’s digitised six-inch maps from 1888–1914 to gather an accurate picture of place names and parish boundaries at the turn of the 20th Century.
As a historical researcher, I'm probably rather obsessed with doing work, which is has some demonstrable contemporary impact.
How does industrialisation impact mortality? How do pandemics impact populations in different regions? And how can we revive lost footpaths and rights of way?
The history of our geography can hold answers to present-day trends and problems, as one University of Portsmouth team is finding out.
Professor Humphrey Southall and Paula Aucott explain their work in the latest episode of Life Solved, the University of Portsmouth’s research podcast.
And although that left a specific amount of data crunching to be done, the idea still required a vast amount of time and energy in practise.
And that’s the other remarkable thing about GB1900: it was made possible by the passionate input of a community of volunteers.
Family history enthusiasts accelerate research
Paula Aucott managed a group of around 1200 volunteer geographers to gather the data. Local historians and family history enthusiasts willingly gave their time to look at maps, make entries and verify them with colleagues. This led to an incredible 2.6 million entries on the database!
This is an enormous resource for finding out where exactly people came from
With this crowdsourced approach, the team were able to process and verify a huge amount of data in just a short time.
What’s unique about GB1900 is that it provides data on actual places, rather than electoral records, birth and death records, which can be misleading due to changing boundaries over time. The work done on this project has connected this data to the existing boundaries and localities of the time to give an unparalleled insight into regional trends.
Connecting present with past through language
So what other uses does GB1900 have today? Another key finding was in the revival of lost or forgotten place names thanks to the map resources. A Welsh building project is now using this as inspiration in naming a modern-day development to ensure that an evolving community can keep this connection to the language and cultures of its past.
This is also about the Welsh language. It's reinforcing the historical locality
Humphrey and Paula also hope the data can be connected to mortality rates to give insight into pandemics of the past, perhaps offering insight for their management in the future. They’re also looking at how this can be connected to electoral statistics.
Restoring historic rights of way
Another surprise benefit to this research was in the recovery of lost footpaths! Maps compiled in the 1960s missed plenty of older paths off the lists due to recording inconsistencies. The research has found a huge number of much older rights of way.
We had over 300,000 footpaths on the maps in addition to a number of bridleways
Good news for walkers indeed!
To listen to Humphrey and Paula talking about their work, you can listen to the Life Solved podcast on any app or desktop device.
Episode transcript:
Anna Rose: Welcome to a new series of Life Solved. This is the podcast that showcases exciting and impactful work that's happening here at the University of Portsmouth, lifting the lid on research that could transform life in the future. This time, if you're a buff for maps, history or geography, if you're curious about place names and local stories, if you're puzzled about the footpaths we wander, we'll be finding out how it all matches up. Thanks to historical geographer Professor Humphrey Southall and his colleague Paula Aucott. We'll explore the new resource that's helping us connect our past and present.
Humphrey Southall: As a historical researcher, I'm probably rather obsessed with doing work, which has some demonstrable contemporary impact.
Anna Rose: GB 1900 is the creation of this team of University of Portsmouth colleagues supported by a network of passionate, crowdsourced volunteers. It's the most detailed historical-geographical index ever compiled for Britain, featuring records of place names from around 1900. It's one part of a wider objective.
Humphrey Southall: A lot of what we're trying to do is transform data for historical areas, to modern areas to create Time series, which can be analysed in a straightforward way.
Anna Rose: Let's find out how these resources are already giving us new insight into social histories, overcoming inconsistencies in record keeping, and challenging our assumptions about populations past and present. This story begins with a disappointment for Humphrey, or so he thought. Having originally suggested the project to establish an index, known as the Gazetteer, of place names in Wales, he pitched for a much larger scale, long term project and missed out on funding. Crestfallen, Humphrey began to look at the resources already available. This led them to putting together software from the Welsh project and maps from the National Library of Scotland to do a national project. They use digitised images of Britain's six-inch
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