Mapping Britain's archaeology
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 01/06/2008



Tom Fort reviews Bloody Old Britain by Kitty Hauser

Clive Aslet reviews a monumental Survey of London
The Ordnance Survey map is one of the enduring glories of this land.
Prime Ministers and prelates come and go. Once unassailable
institutions crumble away. The reputations of poets, painters and
novelists wax and wane.

advertisementBut the OS map - with the occasional modish restyling (a
change of livery, going metric) - goes on and on.

For anyone remotely curious about the landscape, life without it is
unthinkable. That it is what it is - both guide to and treasure-store
of information about the familiar world around us - is due in no
small measure to the subject of Kitty Hauser's riveting, revelatory
and generally rather marvellous book.

O. G. S. Crawford - 'Ogs' or 'Uncle Ogs' to his colleagues and
followers - became the Ordnance Survey's first archaeology officer in
1920. He swiftly startled his boss by announcing his intention to
concentrate on fieldwork, and during his first few months personally
inspected and recorded more than 200 ancient sites in and around the
Cotswolds.

In the years to come, travelling mainly on a bicycle adapted to his
unusual purposes, he dedicated himself to correcting the many errors
perpetuated in the existing maps, and to documenting the visible and
hidden face of Britain.

rest at

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