| Level | Collection |
| Ref_No | LUS |
| Title | Land Utilisation Survey |
| Date | 1930-1938 |
| Description | The maps held at LSE are:
1. LUS/Indexes - index maps for counties
2. LUS/Maps - original survey maps for England, Wales and Scotland. Note that maps for Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdon, Kent, Lancashire and Leicestershire, were damaged by fire. Badly damaged maps have not been listed, but can be viewed by special permission.
3. Published LUS maps at one inch to one mile for England, Wales and Scotland (incomplete set). For numbering, see map in the depositor's file.
Notes on the key and the method of carrying out the survey can be found in the depositor's file. |
| Access Status | Open |
| Extent | 6 double size map chests with 12 drawers |
| Admin History | The Land Utilisation Survey (1930-1938) was based at the London School of Economics and carried out under the direction of Laurence Stamp. The survey gathered information about land use across England, Wales and Scotland, recorded at the scale of 6 inches to one mile using the County Series sheets produced by the Ordnance Survey. The survey work was undertaken by school children and students supervised by geography teachers and Land Utilisation Survey staff across the country. The project was managed at county level by a County Supervisor appointed by Stamp. Most of the survey work was undertaken between 1932 and 1934. Each group surveyed their own parish using the 6 inch maps and a seven classes of land use:
1. Forest and woodland (Key ; F, Fa=high forest; Fb=Coppice; Fc=Scrub; Fd=New plantation. For tree species: c=coniferous; d=deciduous; m=mixed).
2. Meadowland and permanent grass (Key: M)
3. Arable land - includes tilled land, fallow, rotation grass and market gardens (Key: A)
4. Heathland, moorland and rough pasture - also includes abandoned quarries and waste tips which have reverted to or acquired a cover of vegetation. (Key: H)
5. Gardens, orchards and nurseries and water. (Key: G)
6. Agriculturally unproductive land including closely built up areas, quarries, waste tips still in use, industrial buildings, mines, cemetaries, transport. (Key: W)
7. Water features - ponds, lakes, reservoirs, ditches, dykes, streams. (Key: P).
Surveyors were encouraged to add comments to the maps.
The results were sent to Stamp at LSE and cartographers generalised them to produce compilations for the printed Land Use Maps at one inch to one mile covering all of England and Wales and the most densely settled part of Scotland. The highland areas of north and west Scotland remained unpublished. This was an expensive and time consuming part of the project and the financial position of the project was always precarious. However, with the advent of World War II the importance of the project became apparent both of agricultural and post-war planning and government funding became available for the publication series.
The archive of large scale maps is not complete for a number reasons: during the World War II sheets were lent to the wartime Agricultural Emergency Committees to assist the war effort in food production and in 1969 some maps were damaged in a fire. The fire severely damaged the maps for Hampshire (including the Isle of Wight), Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdon, Kent, Lancashire and Leicestershire. Examples of some sheets do survive elsewhere. Sheets from the Warwickshire survey can be found in the Warwickshire County Record Office and sheets of Derbyshire and Yorkshire are held in the Geography Department, Sheffield University. A set of Dorset field survey maps are held in Dorset County Museum.
The maps were accompanied the 'The Land of Britiain - Report of the Land Utilization Survey, six bound regional reports (HD599.A3 L25) and 'The Land of Britiain - its use and misuse (Longman Green, 1948) (HD596 S78).
The published maps have been scanned and are accessible via www.visionofbritain.org.uk. |
| Arrangement | LUS/INDEXES: Comprise:
a) county maps at 1:253,440 showing the incidence of each field survey map, indicating those which were in the collection before the damage caused by fire
b) parish boundaries on maps of each county overprinted on Ordnance Survey 1:100,000 maps of the 1960s showing the National Grid.
Users need to locate on area of interest on a) or b)
LUS MAPS: Field maps arranged by administrative county. They can be accessed from National Grid references or civil parishes within counties through a series of index sheets.
LUS/Box 1: Administrative list relating to survey sheets for Scottish part of the land use survey |
| Copyright | No material may be published without the prior permission of both the copyright holder and the Library. All applications for publication must be made to the Archivist in the first instance, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user. |
| URL | http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/ |