Bartholomew maps
When the 'History' team were deciding what chapters we were going to prepare a life-long interest in railways and the fact that there were remnants of the construction of the Cromarty to Dingwall light railway almost within sight made the choice of subject very easy.
Material was available for research but a search of available maps on the web proved that whilst they either showed no reference to a railway or the original line of the proposed railway it appeared that no organisation had ever produced a map with the actual railway shown. This was a disappointment as a picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say.
Imagine the delight the team felt when quite by chance one of the team was handed a Bartholomew map on which the line was clearly marked including the location of the stations.
Click on image to enlarge.
Now, this was clearly not correct as published articles on the Line clearly demonstrated that the Line was never finished, construction didn't get anywhere near Conon Bridge/Dingwall and those few pieces of completed construction were rapidly disappearing.
Moving on 10 years or so at an Open Day of historical artifacts from the Culbokie an enthusiastic archaeologist, well used to working with maps enquired as to why we had placed so much significance on displaying our map. On learning the background to its uniqueness it was too much of an incentive to find why the map existed and this is the story of the background to the map.
On approaching Chris Fleet of the National Library of Scotland (NLS) Map Section the following was learnt about the background to our map which was published in 1925 between July and December.
Bartholomew gathered their information from quite a range of sources and they never did any direct surveying, so it would be interesting to further investigate how they came to show this line when it clearly was not completed. Many commercial map-makers did anticipate developments however, Bartholomew and Ordnance Survey didn't.
There were editions of the Bartholomew Sheet 21 Inverness & Spey in 1909, 1912, 1918, and 1921. They renamed Sheet 21 to 'Moray and the Black Isle" for the edition you have, in 1925, and subsequent editions. The next edition was in 1931.
1909 1921 (our map 1925) 1931
Click on image to enlarge. Images will withstand further enlargement.
The Cromarty to Dingwall Light Railway first appeared on these maps in 1912, and then stayed there until our map. The next edition, in 1931 finally removed it from the map.
Bartholomew were "desk-based" cartographers, compiling their information as best they could from others. There were no surveyors or teams of people who actually went out and about into the landscape like Ordnance Survey and recorded information directly. What Bartholomew did was primarily to base their mapping on Ordnance Survey's one-inch to the mile maps, reducing these down to the half-inch to the mile scale, and adding their layer colours, etc. and some other details. They then took information from whoever they could. Sometimes this involved sending their maps with accompanying letters to county councils, town councils, or road surveyors based in councils, and asking them to let them know of errors or omissions. Bartholomew also solicited information on errors and corrections from their map purchasers, and entered into formal arrangements with recreational groups. For example, from the late 1890s, Bartholomew entered into an agreement with the Cyclists' Touring Club, whereby Bartholomew supplied them with discounted copies of their half-inch maps in return for CTC members writing in with corrections
Ordnance Survey only surveyed the Black Isle at the basic large scales in ca. 1904 and again in the 1960s. At One-Inch to the mile, which was always less comprehensive, the main editions had revisions in 1896 (2nd edition - https://maps.nls.uk/view/216387000 ) and 1909 (3rd edition - https://maps.nls.uk/view/74490616 ). Bartholomew would have seen these maps, and neither of the OS maps show the Light Railway, so presumably Bartholomew must have been given details of its planned route from somewhere else. The next OS One-Inch map was revised in 1926-27 ( https://maps.nls.uk/view/74400584 ), again without the Light Railway. Presumably once Bartholomew saw this, the penny dropped, and they were able to then correct their map.
Interestingly, on the 1912 map it was annotated with "No corrections required"! Unfortunately, so it seems, no member of the public or CTC wrote in to point out that the railway shouldn't have been there during this time – one of the problems of "crowdsourcing" map revision information. So it is not thought that this is Bartholomew wrongly anticipating a new development, so much as being informed from someone that the railway had been constructed, when it hadn't.
