Town Plans

Town plans are large scale maps of built-up areas, providing detailed information about the urban landscape and buildings.

The first major published work showing detailed town plans was Braun & Hogenberg's Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1572-1617), this features a number of towns and cities in England, Scotland and Ireland, but none from Wales. 

Speed's county map of Caernarvon

What were the earliest town plans in Wales?

Some of the earliest town plans of Wales appear as insets on John Speed's County Maps. These plans are fairly small and show limited detail. Very few other town plans for Welsh towns were published in the next 200 years, though it is possible to find some examples in manuscript maps, such as the plan of Welshpool shown on Humfrey Bleaze's map of the Powis Castle Estate (1629).

Detailed town plans in Wales

By the early nineteenth century there began to be more of an interest in how towns were organised and run and this led to an increase in maps showing detailed plans of towns and cities. Some of the earliest examples for Wales were the maps produced by John Wood in the 1830s. The fact that some of these maps have been annotated to show new developments provides evidence of the importance of such plans. 

What did the Welsh town plans contain?

The Welsh plans contain detailed mapping plus textual and statistical information for urban areas and their environs from the 1830s-1840s. These large scale plans predate examples from the Ordnance Survey at comparable scale. Displayed are outline or block plans of contemporary buildings, together with streets, bridges, tram roads, canals, wharfs, docks, waterways, rivers, agricultural land and a multitude of other features. Landowners, particularly important ones, are named and the boundaries of boroughs, wards and parishes may also be shown.

Some buildings, typically public and commercial premises, are numbered to reference lists on the peripheries of each plan. The distances to nearby towns, dates of fairs and population statistics are routinely given and arbitrary hachuring defines some topography.

Houses and commercial premises are accurately mapped, but are predominantly anonymous, whilst buildings and features identified by name typically include town halls, county halls, churches, chapels, meeting houses, schools, infirmaries, hotels, taverns, banks, Post Offices, works offices, warehouses, market places, slaughter houses or “Shambles”, custom houses, alms houses, bath houses, poor houses, theatres, jails, foundries, gas works, mills, timber yards, lime kilns, turnpikes, weighing stations, wells and burial grounds. Allotments, parks and farm land are also shown and sometimes proposed developments, such as new roads, appear in minimal outline.

John Wood's town plan of Aberystwyth, 1834

Which town plans are available? 

The Library’s collection includes plans of the seven Welsh towns of Aberystwyth, Bangor, Brecon, Cardigan, Newport, Caernarfon and Pwllheli, together with the nearby English border towns of Chester and Oswestry which have been included because of their proximity and their strong Welsh associations.

Most of the plans are orientated with North at the top and have scales of 2 chains (1:1,584), 3 chains (1:2,376) and 6 chains : 1 inch (1:4,752).Often, inset maps of the borough are included at smaller scales.

The Library’s plans were mainly printed by the three Edinburgh firms of J. & W. Smith, Leith & Smith and Forrester & Nichol. Map colouration, where it exists, is generally faded, but can be especially useful in identifying the boundaries of administrative areas.

Town plans by the Ordnance Survey

As the nineteenth century progressed the development of local government went hand-in-hand with the detailed mapping of towns by the Ordnance Survey. The 1:500 scale plans they produced are amongst the largest scale maps every made by the Ordnance Survey and are unrivaled in their attention to even the smallest details such as individual trees and street furniture.

The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the government agency responsible for producing mapping for the whole of Great Britain. Maps produced by the OS are at the heart of the Library’s collection of modern printed mapping.

Ordnance Survey town plan of Cardiff, 1880

What town plans did the Ordnance Survey map?

From 1855 to 1894 about 400 towns with populations of over 4000 inhabitants were mapped by the OS at 1:500 scale. These were produced at a time of improvements in town planning and sanitary systems following the Public Health Act, 1848. Plans of many towns were later revised at the expense of the town authorities between 1898 and 1908, some towns conducting their own surveys. These plans provide more detail and textual information than OS 1:2,500 (1st , 2nd and subsequent Edition 25 inch:1 mile maps), often naming buildings such as public houses, stating the uses of commercial and industrial premises, occasionally identifying the functions of individual rooms and even showing details such as lamp posts and man holes.

The 1:500 scale sheets constitute informative plans of urban landscapes at the turn of the 19th / 20th century and can be especially valuable when used in combination with census returns and commercial directories.

What Ordnance Survey town plans are in the Library's collection?

The Library did not receive mapping under Legal Deposit until 1911 which means that there are gaps in the collection of older OS maps. However, the Library has managed to obtain the bulk of OS material covering Wales, including the plans of 28 Welsh towns, together with the English communities of Birkenhead, Oswestry and Shrewsbury, as well as a large amount of mapping for England and Scotland.

Merthyr Tydfil is the only town in our collection which was mapped at the somewhat smaller scale of 1:528 (120 inches:1 mile). This scale preceded the 1:500 scale and was employed for 29 British towns. Shortly after, this scale was revised to 1:500 to aid metrication.

Graphic indexes were published for all of our Welsh plans and also for most British urban communities mapped at large scale. These indexes comprise small scale maps of each urban area with the 1:500 sheet lines or grid superimposed forming finding aids which show the precise geographical coverage of each 1:500 sheet.

Other town plans

• A plan of the harbour & bar of Aberystwith in the County of Cardigan, South Wales by Thomas Lewis, 1768