The Great Map of Scotland

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, in an essay written near the end of his life on the genesis of Treasure Island, expressed disbelief that there were people who did not care about maps. ‘The names, the shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and rivers, the prehistoric footsteps of man still traceable up hill and down dale… Here is an inexhaustible fund of interest for any man with eyes to see or twopence-worth of imagination to understand with!’

- William Roy

The map Stevenson drew of an island that inspired his most famous work was, of course, a fantasy map, but he might have been referring to the grid maps of the Ordnance Survey, for which the groundwork was laid by William Roy (1726–90), acknowledged as its founder. The maps can be used both to plan outings to come or to summon memories of past ventures, thus going on a journey without ever departing your place of study.

This is the joy of the Ordnance Survey as a leisure map, but it had military origins. In 1747, in response to the Jacobite uprising in the Highlands, Lt-Col David Watson, Deputy Quartermaster-General of the Board of Ordnance, the body responsible for military infrastructure and equipment, presented the idea of a mapping survey of Scotland to the Duke of Cumberland, his commander-in chief. The initiative was part of a wider plan to open up the Highlands, connecting newly built forts and older fortifications via new road networks. Having received approval for the idea, Watson deputed the project to Roy, a young engineer and his assistant quartermaster, based in the Board’s office in Edinburgh Castle.