Home

About Cartophilia

"These studies: which have been certainly much more laborious than the subject would at first sight seem to demand..."
Sir Herbert George Fordham : Hertfordshire Maps: a Descriptive Catalogue 1919


For those with a love of old maps and long memories may notice a similarity with Genmaps: a website which I created at the turn of the Millennium to address the difficulty of finding antique map images online. Unfortunately: even when I could locate them: they were mostly in such low definition as to be of little use: or else they took forever to download. After a few years my efforts to upgrade the site took a back seat as cancer: major surgery: and catastrophic earthquakes took their toll: and the host of Freepages: Rootsweb: suffered a major server crash:  rescued in part by Ancestry.com. Meanwhile technology marched ahead with the introduction of high quality scanners  being used to digitize Museum and University map collections worldwide and posting them online. Two years ago  I resolved to re-create it with a new name: remove all the broken links and poor quality images from Genmaps and replace them here with useful material.

Im not a skilled programmer: so I have tried to keep things simple. However: even so: most evenings for the last two years  have been taken up  in searching:  researching: and indexing. This is no cartobibliography. There will be errors and I  rely on you "out there" to contact me so that I can correct them.


Many of the images are from scans created by Institutions and Libraries worldwide. Most of the images on Cartophilia are high resolution.   A minority are medium resolution (i.e All text on image is at least legible) and will be replaced as soon as better images become available.

   I am happy to answer any queries regarding  old British maps: but do not buy or sell maps.
Please consult the list of commercial map dealers on our Links page and contact one of them.

I would like to acknowledge the invaluable help of the many contributors of images to this site and: particularly: to
Free Pages at Rootsweb and Ancestry.com for making  Cartophilia possible