Full Description

Product Code: BWS1815

Original Title: A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales with part of Scotland; exhibiting the collieries and mines, the marshes and fen lands originally overflowed by the sea, and the Varieties of Soil according to the variations in the Substrata, illustrated by the most Descriptive Names

By William Smith

Reproduced by the British Geological Survey from an original held in its archives.

Map size: 127.6cm x 95.2cm. (Folded size: 24cm x 13.3cm.) 

A reproduction of William Smith's famous 1815 geological map of 'England and Wales with part of Scotland' (series 53, issued between 2nd Nov 1815 and 17th Dec 1815). The original map was never published as a single sheet. The large size of the original map and the size of the printing presses in the early 19th century meant that it had to be published in fifteen sections, each folded into six 'panels'. The original panels held in the BGS Library have been scanned and the joins removed digitally.

At its original scale of five miles to the inch, the map would have been eight feet long by six feet wide if it had ever been published as a single sheet. The reproduction is published at approximately half scale: ten miles to the inch, and is colour-matched to the original. The original maps are valuable and fragile; viewing at BGS is by appointment only. Now this beautiful half-scale reproduction means that Smith's achievement can, at long last, be widely appreciated.

A framed 1815 William Smith map of England and Wales can also be viewed at The Geological Society of London building.