There's an 1801 map of the area that we were kindly pointed towards at the British Library's Online Gallery. It's a surveyor's draft for the Ordnance Survey map of 1807. Although the field boundaries are not accurate (there was no intention to publish them on the final map), it is still interesting to see it overlaid on today's Google Earth. The field boundaries are recorded on the tithe map of 1843.
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It is also interesting to see field names, listed here on a Schedule for Great Street Gate Farm in 1870.
These emotive maps of the past, giving a flavour of what the area looked like up to 200 years ago, won't mean anything to a hungry Swiss Aggregates Giant - it doesn't care about our local history. But Holcim and Aggregate Industries ought to move with the times and progress to a more sustainable and environmentally acceptable business model, using increased proportions of recycled and secondary aggregates for example, before gouging out and scarring our beautiful and historic land.
