How maps helped us to track down orchards

At every step, maps were a great resource for the project. Read more about which maps we used and where to find maps for your own orchard research. 

How we searched for orchards in Luton step-by-step

We searched historical maps for orchards and plotted them using QGIS

2. Grading locations

Looking at satellite images, volunteers graded the polygons to find the most promising locations. 

3. Groundtruthing

Using the live Google Map, volunteers scouted out the most promising places in real life. 

Why use maps to trace orchards?

Orchards were a valuable crop in the past, valuable enough to be surveyed and captured on maps. Maps were the basis for the National Farm Survey of England and Wales (1941-43) and the Second Land Utilisation Survey of Great Britain (1965-70). The former are available at the National Archives in paper form, but a project has begun to digitise them.

Other maps are freely available online via the National Archives of Scotland. Some of the maps were kindly supplied through the People's Trust for Endangered Species, who hold them as part of the Orchards East project. Each map brought up new insights and different locations of orchards in Luton. 

1842 Tithe Map of Luton

For each parcel of land, the tithe map registers who owns it, who works on it, what it is used for and how much tithe there is to pay. Helpfully, this historical document also lists orchards. 

1878 to 1937 OS County Series

Ordnance Survey 25 inch to the mile County Series maps (1841-1952) formed the backbone for discovering historical orchards in Luton. OS maps continue to detail places with fruit trees to the present day.

1963 OS National Grid map

The 1960s Ordnance Survey National Grid maps were provided by a Luton map collector who has almost 200 large-format sheets for Luton and he scoured them for orchards. 

Google Maps and Google My Maps

Google My Maps were a great way to share the findings from the historical maps with volunteers. We copied the polygons (outlines of historical orchards) from QGIS onto today's satellite imagery and could then share the locations online. All we needed was a Google account.

Without this technology, it would have been difficult to reach so many people.