The research is taking me all over the place, quite literally: Thursday week presenting a talk for the International Conference on the History of Cartography in Amsterdam, then Tokyo the following day for the International Cartographic Conference (see Events for two-places-at-once explanation).
As preparation for the above, a recap is handy: first there were isobaths – submarine contours – possibly ‘invented’ by Bruins – or Ancelin – either way, definitely in the Netherlands where the need to understand qualities of water drove innovation. And they fitted so well: swirling, fluid, ‘horizontal’ lines that looked so similar to conventional depictions of water-bodies; it is impossible to mistake ‘lake’ with ‘land’ on these maps. Here (see below) ‘pictorial’ water-lining and ‘scientific’ isobaths work together hand in hand.
Map by Cruquius, Image use courtesy of Leiden University
The question was, could horizontal lines ‘climb out of water’ and encircle mountain-sides? There was no doubting the value of contour lines ‘scientifically’, the question was one of perception; could we ‘read’ them? In the 1770’s Hutton used them to show altitude, though we don’t have his map. The French were toying with the idea (more on them another time). But at issue is a mismatch: when mountains have always been represented with vertical lines ^^^ (including hachures), how can watery, fluid, horizontal lines be readily perceived as rugged shoulders and lofty peaks?
Image use with permission of The National Archives (TNA)
An early – tentative – foray was made by Robert Dawson. A fabulous draftsman, rather than scientist (or writer; he calls his watercolours “essays” and one can track his thinking through his drawings). In 1803, required to teach cadets drawing skills, he planned a ‘course of instruction’ for the Ordnance Survey. As this entailed working in ‘the classroom’, he advised: “Stones may be taken as Models of Hills, their Surfaces being frequently varied by accidental frictions, to a direct similitude of Features, with those, which Hills display.” (See? Bit clumsy with words.)
Image use with permission of The National Archives (TNA)
Tucked inside his hand-written ‘instructions’ are these beautiful little drawings of stones, some employing traditional vertical lines, in others he also experiments with a pictorial use of horizontal lines. These are not ‘scientific’ contour lines displaying accurate elevation, but you ‘see’ him figuring out whether mountains could be drawn ‘horizontally’. Forty years later he was still not convinced (more on that another time, or come to Amsterdam and hear: “A line drawn: the tortuous progress of contours onto British Maps”).
Look at the materials listed here: “a week solution of powder of Tripoli…”, “… varnished on the reverse side with Japan black”, “The plates are of the best Silesian zinc”, “… and smoothed with a piece of steatite, known in the trade as snakestone or Water of Ayr stone.” “A mixture of Paris black, Castile soap, white wax, tallow or sweet oil, and shellac …”, “Copper-plate printers’ ink consists of Frankfurt black and a little indigo or Prussian blue …”, “… three ounces of Burgundy pitch …”, “… three quarts of moderately thick gum Arabic water …”, “… finely powdered bitumen of Judea.” “… a quarter of bruised Aleppo galls in a quart of water …”. Each material named by provenance (I am beginning to interrogate text like a geographer). It was the mention of ‘Aleppo’ that had me tracking back for the other products named by the places where we meddled in people’s lives, took things from them and called it ‘trade’; sending me to the doors of despair.
For me contour lines on a map represent freedom of traverse, I forget that the intention of the Ordnance Survey then was not to enable artists to go wandering in the landscape, but rather for quantifying or qualifying land for defence and attack or ownership, taxes, railways, trade: generally, the transfer of money and belongings to those who already have enough. Yet now targeted OS adverts on Facebook exhort me to eschew the gym and subscribe to their products to get into the hills; how times have changed. 
You follow this blog because it’s about contour lines, no? So, here’s my own ‘advert’; you could do a lot worse than give 
Books have been written on what maps are and are not; I know, I am presently wading through them for the PhD. In amongst the dry, the erudite and the dull are gems that are causing me to rethink what I assumed to know. First up among them are the 19th Century training manuals used to teach cadets to draw maps. To explain the contours of a landscape some required students to study the body: above on the left, a face is depicted through contour and hachure, it does little to reveal features or character, it is designed to give accurate elevation of the nose: an unusual characteristic for a portrait. So, there is on the one hand the body as ‘body double’ for landscape and then, as alluded to in the 
Building a picture of island life has been greatly aided by the Masonic Lodge on Stornoway whose records date back to 1767. Thanks to them I know which OS men or ‘Sappers & Miners’ joined the Masons whilst on Lewis, others will have joined elsewhere. I had assumed there to be a photo of the surveyors amongst their records, so when we couldn’t find this, I went back to my source who clarified ‘a painting’, not of ‘OS men’, but in honour of an event that took place in 1847. Of the remarkable 84 figures depicted, 5 are OS: Captain Burnaby and Corporal Kielle resplendent in red (I hadn’t noticed their uniforms in the b&w copies I initially saw). Sappers and Miners: Matheson, Stafford & Auckburn fare less well, skulking in the back row minus uniform, though Stafford seems to be sporting a bow tie. According to the census Matheson worked as a Clerk, but of the others: who had taught them surveying? And were they previously stationed in Ireland? 
Having jumped forward in time with this Summer’s Lewisian foray, I need to begin research in the place where the OS first adopted contour lines… Ireland next stop.
Two years ago, whilst studying in Cambridge, I began noticing a different road grammar: full-stops, ‘nothings’, big fat zero’s littered the streets; clustered in the vicinity of the campus, they exuded a peculiar fascination and I began to ‘log’ them. The project – which resulted in an 
Now there is a new focus: not straight down, but sort of knee-height. I worry I have the demeanour of a dog assessing walls to mark. Street corners, have stolen my gaze. (My partner tuts under his breath each time I slow down… I bagged three 
Just last Saturday, walking to the 
Looking for something, or looking for nothing, I know I now have my ‘eye in’.
This doesn’t explain why in the second OS survey of the area (in 1898) there seems to be a track running right through the middle (had stones been removed?) and a Bench Mark (89.1ft) incised potentially into one of these ‘druidical remains’! I am pleased to report the track swings to the west of the circle and I could not find this OS graffito (also, neither track nor this particular BM, are recorded on the first survey: 1849-52).
The short walk south from stone circle to shore-line passes the recorded ‘sites’ of two other Bench Marks and a ‘trigonometrical station’ (triangle with a dot in the centre), which appears on both maps at the summit of a mound titled ‘Cnoc an Tursa’. I’m not sure what would have been used to mark the place at the time, there is no ‘trig point’ extant (as we would know it), but a careful perusal did reveal a faint Bench Mark in roughly the right place.
I have been trying to untangle what it is about B.M.s that I find so entrancing, I know why I’m drawn to 
Bringing us to the B.M. on the beach mentioned in a previous 
I am hugely indebted to Margaret from Stornoway Library for trawling the 1851 census before I arrived. What has emerged (over 29 pages) is a snapshot into the lives of 80 OS men registered as living on Lewis then. In amongst the fishermen and fish-curers, shoe and straw-hat makers, are the chainmen, draftsmen, surveyors, clerks and officers of the Ordnance Survey: stationed in local houses and in Inns (run perhaps by a Proprietrix!) Marrying in, having children, making and living their lives on the Island.
Over half of them were Irish (or with Irish wives) suggesting – prior to Lewis – some would have been stationed in Donegal, was one of their number involved in those first forays into drawing contour lines on maps?
There’s more to follow regarding other Lewis-based discoveries, but I am sad to report missing a photograph that would have put faces to names. Allegedly Stornoway Masonic Lodge held a photo of the OS men. I was stood a drink, told some tall tales, given time to wander the wood-clad corridors (occasionally hung three deep in pictures of men in aprons), but of the photo I sought was no trace.
