Scotways Historic Footpaths Project Help Page
This project aimed to trace all of the footpaths from the Ordnance Survey six-inch to the mile 2nd edition maps of Scotland (1888-1913). The project ran between April and December 2022 and collectively traced over 120,000 footpaths, spanning over 34,000 miles.
The following sections provide further information on the Footpaths Transcription Project:
View the footpaths
We have made the footpaths available in two viewers:
- Single-screen viewer
- Zoom in on an area with a mouse wheel, zoom buttons, double-click or pinch to zoom.
- Locate the map using a modern or historical place name search, or by historic counties/parishes (further information).
- The legend or key explains the colouring of the paths into labelled and unlabelled categories.
- Select the viewer links on the right to look at maps of the same area in other NLS map viewers.
- Split-screen viewer
- Zoom in on an area with a mouse wheel, zoom buttons, double-click or pinch to zoom.
- Locate the map using a modern or historical place name search, or by historic counties/parishes (further information).
- Choose other background historic or modern map or satellite layers on each side (use both drop-down lists).
- Toggle the paths layer off or on.
Purpose
The primary aim of the project was to record paths and tracks shown on Ordnance Survey Six-Inch to the Mile maps of around 1900, to help facilitate Scotways’ work in researching the backgrounds of footpaths today and safeguarding them as rights of way. The initial focus of the project was therefore on recording paths and tracks which were specifically labelled as 'Footpath' (F.P.) or 'Bridle Road' (B.R.). However, it quickly became apparent that Ordnance Survey did not assign these abbreviations to many other paths and tracks that were clearly footpaths. Sometimes more detailed Ordnance Survey 25 inch to the mile maps had these F.P. or B.R. abbreviations which were not generalised into the OS Six-inch maps which we were tracing. More generally, Ordnance Survey was reticent in applying F.P. or B.R. abbreviations to many pedestrian or walkable routes which were shown on their maps.
The scope of the project was therefore widened substantially to include and trace paths or tracks which did not have F.P. or B.R. abbreviations. However, the aim was not to trace all tracks or paths. Following the guiding purpose of assisting Scotways, we generally tried to exclude paths or tracks which were not intended for walking (such as firebreaks in woodland, tracks to quarries or refuse heaps, and private tracks leading to or around particular buildings). In general too, we tried to exclude routeways which were intended for motorised traffic. These were often described as being 'metalled', referring to the crushed small pieces of stone that formed part of the system of creating a levelled, sealed and waterproof road surface, as pioneered by John McAdam (1756-1836). Paths and tracks, by way of contrast, were usually on bare soil and described as 'unmetalled'. These principles and exclusions are explained in more detail in the Path definitions section below.
Path definitions
The definitions of path or track which guided the project are important in understanding which routes were generally traced, how these traced routes were categorised, and which routes were generally excluded.
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The initial focus of the project was on tracing footpaths which were marked with a 'Footpath' (F.P.) or 'Bridle Road' (B.R.) abbreviation. Some of these had also been recorded already during the GB1900 project, and were shown by green dots. However, a smaller, but significant proportion had not been found by GB1900 and continued to be discovered during the Footpaths project.
Footpaths traced by these F.P. / B.R. abbreviations were categorised as Labelled Footpaths. These are shown in the viewer by blue dashed lines.
Any footpath which did not have a 'Footpath' (F.P.) or 'Bridle Road' (B.R.) abbreviation was categorised as Unlabelled and shown in the viewer as pink dashed lines.
- In general we encouraged paths to be traced until they reached a junction with another path, track or road, or a definitive feature such as a wall, fence, farmyard or building. We encouraged junctions to be the terminus points for multiple paths. As we were not tracing roads, paths often terminated or began at a road, and we did not trace the paths going across roads. Necessarily, start and end points were flexible, especially for longer routes.
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On Ordnance Survey Six-Inch to the Mile maps, routes shown by a double dashed line with a thicker / heavier dash on one side indicated roads, which we tried to exclude. Similarly, for 'fenced' routes (ie. enclosed by a wall or fence), those with a thicker line on one side indicated the route as being a road rather than a path or track. These are clearly shown on the Ordnance Survey Six-Inch Characteristics Sheet. It was also useful to refer to other maps in the Side by side viewer for confirmation. Bartholomew's half-inch maps (1897-1907), and the OS one-inch 3rd edition maps (1903-1923) usually show metalled roads in colour. On the ground, roads were usually distinguished from paths or tracks by being "metalled", ie. with a surface of crushed stone.
Although easy to state and understand as a principle, the distinction between roads and tracks/footpaths was quite debatable in practice for several reasons:
- Often the Ordnance Survey's Six-Inch and One-Inch to the mile maps, as well as Bartholomew's Half-Inch to the mile maps did not agree with one another, often with one showing the same route as 'metalled' and others showing the same route as 'unmetalled'. These maps were compiled in different ways at slightly different times, which helped to explain these differences, but not to resolve them unambiguously. Quite often, other evidence of the route being a "road" was drawn on - such as features on the map including water troughs for horses, or Bench Marks and Surface Levels, as well as other non-map evidence and local knowledge.
- Sometimes there were clearly errors on the Ordnance Survey map - for example, with F.P. abbreviations but no marked path. We traced these where the marked path could be found on more detailed 25 Inch to the mile maps.
- Many early "roads", described and named as roads on maps, such as Roman roads, coffin roads, drove roads, military roads etc., were not "metalled" nor intended for motorised vehicles - so were not "roads", following our definition! We traced these only where they were clearly paths or tracks, intended for pedestrians, even though they were often named as 'Roads' on the map.
- Canal towpaths were often clearly walkable, and not intended for motorised traffic, and so were usually traced.
- On the ground today, as well as in the past, there may be no clear distinction between a 'metalled' and 'unmetalled' track, especially if former 'metalling' has decayed or fallen away, or smaller loose stones have been added to the top of a track, etc.
- Some footpath tracers, recognising that the primary goal of the project was to safegaurd footpaths today, deliberately avoided tracing paths which had become roads on present-day mapping, even though these may not have been roads on 1900s mapping.
- Following Scotways' advice, it was easy to exclude localised tracks to quarries, refuse heaps, or to specific farm buildings, as these were of less interest for Scotways' purposes. However, some of these smaller tracks were not always easy to distinguish from longer paths which were intended for walking.
- Windbreaks or gaps in woodland which were not intended as routeways were not always easy to distinguish from real paths intended for walking through woodland.
Due to these differences and difficulties in interpretation, there are necessarily variations in how these particular roads or tracks have been treated by different tracers in different places.
Field List
The following information was recorded about each path:
Field Name | Description |
id | The unique ID for the path, generated automatically as a sequential number |
time | The date and time that the path was saved to the database |
unlabelled | YES for unlabelled paths - see Path definitions section above for an explanation |
length | length of the path in kilometres |
We also recorded the individual NLS user id for internal management purposes, but this is not available in the public dataset available for download below.
Download
Footpaths dataset download
We have made available the Footpaths dataset for onward re-use and download. These files use UTF-8 for character encoding.
The Footpaths dataset is available in CSV and GeoJSON formats:
Please read the fields section to explain the field names and content.
These datasets were taken on 27 March 2023.
Each of these links will open a file that can be saved locally. For the GeoJSON file, please change the file extension from *.js to *.geojson. Please also look at our guide on Opening Map Datasets in QGIS for advice on how to use the CSV and GeoJSON files within the free QGIS desktop software.
You can also view related details of the footpaths dataset and onward re-use, on our Data Foundry Historic Footpaths page.
Background mapping
You can also bring the Ordnance Survey Six-Inch 1900s mapping into other software, following our Re-using georeferenced maps guide. The OS Six-Inch mapping is available through our Historic Maps API via MapTiler Cloud.
This allows the zoomable OS Six-Inch mapping to be added into QGIS, ArcGIS, or geojson.io so that the paths layer can be seen on top of a background layer of Ordnance Survey Six-Inch to the mile 1900s historic mapping.
Corrections
If you would like to suggest edits or corrections to any of the content of the Paths dataset, please contact us at maps@nls.uk with the subject line 'Paths Dataset Correction'. It would be very helpful if you either quote the path id that needs to be corrected, or send a specific URL from our paths viewer with details of the path.