Tuesday, 11th February 2003

Mr Chris Fleet of the National Library of Scotland was our guest speaker this month, delivering a fascinating talk accompanied with slides of the debuts of mapping in Scotland.

Although some maps already existed before, Timothy Pont was the real pioneer of Scottish cartography. In a society where navigation without some sort of chart or map is inconceivable, it is difficult to imagine that in Mary's days, people did not think in terms of maps. Roads were few and poor but well-marked, and people would have found their way by means of descriptive written instructions, landmarks and oral communication with locals. Mary must have had a very sketchy impression of what she was coming home to, as early maps were approximate and fanciful in the way they mixed factual information with mythical reports. The Highlands for example consist of little else but a mass of hills while an enormous Loch Tay is tentatively planted in the middle of the country.

Fortunately for us, the National Library of Scotland has done a marvellous job at bringing these maps to us, by putting together a series of very informative pages on their website. The following link will give you access to a fully searchable database of Pont's maps as well as background information contained in Mr Fleet's talk:

http://www.nls.uk/pont/

This next link will take you to over 800 maps of Scotland covering the years from 1560 to 1928, including town plans/views, marine charts and counties, and can be searched by year and cartographer or engraver:

http://www.nls.uk/digitallibrary/map/early/index.html