Richard R. Oliver – författare

This book offered the first comprehensive study of the enclosure mapping of England and Wales. Enclosure maps are fundamental sources of evidence in many types of historical inquiries. Although modern historians tend to view these large-scale maps essentially as sources of data on past economies and societies, this book argues that enclosure maps had a much more active role at the time they were compiled. Seen from this perspective of their contemporary society, enclosure maps are not simply antiquarian curiosities, cultural artefacts, or useful sources for historians but instruments of land reorganisation and control which both reflected and consolidated the power of those who commissioned them. The book is accompanied by a fully searchable, descriptive and analytical web catalogue of all parliamentary and non-parliamentary enclosure maps extant in public archives and libraries and offers an essential research tool for economic, social and local historians and for geographers, lawyers and planners.

The tithe surveys of mid-nineteenth-century England and Wales marked a new departure in government-sponsored, cadastral surveying of the nation's land. The 11,800 large-scale, detailed maps which they comprise are recognised as one of the most important sets of manuscript historical sources used by historical geographers and economic, social and local historians as well as lawyers representing clients in property and rights of way disputes and county and local planning offices. Despite this much acknowledged value, historians are not well served with indexes, descriptive catalogues or indications of tithe map coverage. A first object of this book is to provide a standard work of reference which will be an essential research tool for users of tithe maps. The database has also been analysed to reveal the general cartographic characteristics of this internationally important government survey.