A Vision of Britain through Time
This website presents the history of Great Britain through places between 1801 and 2001. It includes maps, statistical trends, a gazetteer of British administrative units, on-line versions of a selection of tables and early printed text from some of the published Census Reports as well as historical descriptions of places and journeys. The site is free to use and does not require any registration.
Project
Academic field
Affiliation
Project link
arts-humanities.net
Principal project staff
Dr Humphrey Southall
Start date
Saturday, September 1, 2001
Source material
Historical statistics - from census reports, data on births, marriages and deaths, and unemployment and poor law statistics.
10m. words of text: of accounts of journeys around Britain, such as Celia Fiennes' Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary, cross-referenced by place to the rest of our system; over 90,000 entries from descriptive gazetteers published in the late 19th century, describing towns, villages and landmarks; and the main report from every census up to 1961.
The recognised Archival place-name authorities for British historical administrative units, including Youngs' Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England (1979, 1991) and Richards' Welsh Administrative and Territorial Units (1969).
The original system mainly consisted of three sets of one inch to one mile maps of Great Britain. The new system includes over 1,000 historical maps showing administrative and parliamentary boundaries, together with a smaller library of British military maps of the whole of Europe.
Data formats