Why old maps of market towns are worth your time

English market towns wear their history lightly. A wide street that now carries traffic might once have held stalls and livestock. A quiet passage beside a Georgian frontage could be the ghost of a medieval lane. Old maps are the best tool we have for peeling back those layers. They show not just where buildings stood, but how people moved, traded and marked out their boundaries. For anyone interested in local history and countryside heritage, learning to read them is a deeply rewarding skill.

Getting to grips with the key, scale and orientation

Before you interpret anything, find the map’s key or legend. Early maps often lack one, so you may need to work from comparison. Common symbols include a cross for a market cross, a small building with a tower or spire for a church, and tiny trees for orchards or woods. Hachures – short parallel lines – show slopes. A windmill or watermill is usually drawn in profile. A pound or pinfold appears as a small enclosure, often near the edge of town.

Check the scale. Many historic maps use chains, furlongs or miles. A scale bar of one mile might be several inches long. Orientation matters too: not every old map is north-up. Some are aligned to the church or the main road. If the layout looks strange, rotate it mentally until the river or the market place matches what you know on the ground.

Reading the market place and its buildings

The market square is the heart of these towns, and old maps reveal how it has changed. Look for the market cross, often shown as a small cross or a dot with a circle. A tollbooth or town hall may sit in the middle, sometimes with a lock-up or a corn exchange added later. The shambles – butchers’ stalls – might be a narrow row of buildings cutting across the square. Butter markets and fish markets often had their own covered areas.

Behind the street frontages, you will see long, narrow plots. These are burgage plots, the medieval equivalent of a shop with a back garden and a workshop. Their boundaries often survive as hedges, walls or later buildings. Inns and coaching yards show up as larger courtyards with stabling. A map from 1800 might show a yard that has since been built over, so compare carefully with later maps.

Tracing lost lanes and shifting boundaries

Many market towns had back lanes behind the main streets, serving as service routes and refuse ways. Some have vanished under later development. Old maps show them as thin, unlabelled lines. You may also spot encroachments: small buildings or gardens creeping onto former waste or common land. These are often marked as “waste” or “common” on tithe and enclosure maps.

Boundaries are another rich seam. Parish boundaries frequently follow a stream, a hedge, a road or a ridge. Borough boundaries were sometimes marked with stones or posts, and maps may note “boundary stone” in tiny letters. Enclosure maps and awards from the 18th and 19th centuries are especially good for this, as they redrew the landscape and recorded every new field and footpath.

Comparing maps across time – with care

No single map tells the whole truth. A tithe map from the 1840s was made for tithe commutation, so it focuses on land ownership and produce. An enclosure map records a legal award. An estate map from the 1700s served a landowner’s pride. Early county maps from the 1600s are charming but often inaccurate in detail. Later maps, such as the first edition series, are more precise but still reflect their surveyors’ priorities.

• Date and purpose: always ask why the map was made. A map for taxation will show different things from one for drainage.
• Revision dates: a map may be updated piecemeal. Check for small dates in the margins or corners.
• Symbol drift: a symbol for a windmill on one map might mean a mill and a house on another. Compare the key if there is one.
• Overlay method: trace the old map onto clear film and lay it over a modern map or a later historic one. Align on fixed points like the church tower or a bridge.

Practical tips for the curious researcher

Start with the largest scale map you can find – ideally 1:2,500 or 25 inches to the mile. County record offices and local studies libraries hold tithe maps, enclosure awards and estate plans. Many are now digitised, but a magnifying glass and a pencil are still useful. Write down what you see before you interpret it. Note the date, the surveyor and any unusual marks.

Be sceptical of romantic assumptions. A lane that looks ancient may be a Victorian service road. A “lost” market square might simply have been a wider street. Cross-check with other sources: wills, deeds, newspaper advertisements, old photographs and archaeological reports. The joy of old maps is not that they give easy answers, but that they ask better questions. With patience, you will learn to see your market town as a palimpsest – a document written and rewritten by generations.