NLS Historical maps API: Historical Maps of Great Britain for use in mashups

National Library of Scotland and MapTiler bring you a vast database of historic maps of Great Britain converted to seamless digital form, perfect for online browsing on your desktop or mobile device. These maps can be used for many applications in research, education, or any other field. This page gives a detailed overview of how you can implement the NLS maps for your use case. The whole mapping is based on out-of-copyright Ordnance Survey maps dating from the 1920s to the 1940s.

There are various applications for the NLS maps, such as:

  • embedding the maps in your own website
  • using the maps for your research purposes
  • using the maps as a background for your own markers or geographical data
  • using the maps to create derivative work

Starting from April 1st, 2022, all maps are hosted in MapTiler Cloud.
To access the maps, you should create a user account, only then you will be able to view the maps and implement them in your projects.

The MapTiler Cloud hosting allows a number of improvements to the service, including the ability to monitor your own tile usage, improved documentation, and use of related maps and services. MapTiler Cloud brings (among others) a new free tier for all non-commercial subscribers using 100,000 tile requests per month or less. Commercial users or those using more than 100,000 tile requests per month will pay according to their usage level. See the pricing overview on the MapTiler website.

MapTiler Cloud provides access not only to all NLS historic maps but also to all standard MapTiler maps with worldwide coverage. Check the previews at MapTiler Cloud - Tiles, all this with a single subscription.

What account is right for you

If you use the NLS historic maps commercially or you expect traffic higher than 100,000 map tile requests per month, go to the account settings section of your MapTiler Cloud account and subscribe to one of the commercial plans: FLEX or UNLIMITED. For higher volume traffic, please contact MapTiler directly to get the CUSTOM plan.

Go to MapTiler Cloud - Tiles, find and open the map you need, and then copy and paste the relevant URL into your website or application.

How to display the historic map on your mobile device or tablet

In order to view any map on your mobile phone or tablet, you shall use the Native SDK for Android and Native SDK for iOS. 

You can develop for both mobile platforms using Flutter.

How to embed the historic map in your website

The easiest way of embedding the historical map in your website is to use an iFrame. It is a tool simple to use and you can do some modifications to it as well. Just remember, you are going to need a MapTiler Cloud API key, which is accessible in the MapTiler Cloud administration.
Feel free to try the example below:

https://api.maptiler.com/tiles/uk-baire250k1940/?key=_YOUR_KEY_HERE_#10/53.433/-8.015

How to embed the historic map in a mashup

You can use historic maps as a background for your own data, place a custom marker on top of it, or implement a custom functionality of your choice. There are various ways how to combine old maps and modern custom data. With MapTiler Cloud, you can use both raster and vector tiles. And you can choose from several different Javascript Libraries. The following examples are taken from the
United Kingdom road map in MapTiler Cloud (down in the UK section).

Each example is featured with a sample of code and a set of instructions on how to use it. On top of that, you get a direct link to an API reference for each javascript library. 

To use raster tiles with TileJSON or XYZ:

https://api.maptiler.com/tiles/uk-baire250k1940/tiles.json?key=_YOUR_KEY_HERE

With MapTiler Cloud you can create a custom mashup online while using custom and publicly available data sources. Check out this tutorial and learn how to edit your map style and add new custom datasets on top of it.

Additional information

Use of our online service or tiles in commercial websites or applications (iPhone apps, ..) must be confirmed from our side! Please contact us at geo@nls.uk.

If you want to help us and provide an alternative mirror for our map tiles please contact us. Other forms of cooperation are welcome as well. If you use our maps in an interesting application, please let us know. 

If you use the code on your website, please sign up for our announcement mailing list. This is a low-volume mailing list, only with announcements regarding any new features or API changes. Your email address is not public and you will not receive spam.

License and terms of use

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can also read the full legal code of the license.

The map is provided as an online service under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can embed the map in your own website, display your own markers or mapping data on top of it, use it for research purposes, or create derivative work from it.

The only condition is that you must display an attribution to the National Library of Scotland, together with a link to our website, whenever our map is used. If you create derivative work, the documentation of your work must contain this attribution.

The primary intention behind creating this map service is to promote the use of historical maps in online mashups.

We are following the OpenGIS WMTS REST standard. The tiles are compatible with other popular online maps, such as the Google Maps API, Bing Maps SDK, or OpenStreetMap, and are in the Spherical Mercator projection.

The service is normally available 24 hours a day, but the National Library of Scotland cannot be held liable if the site is unavailable at any time, for any period, for any reason.

Before using the service, please read carefully the MapTiler Cloud Terms & Conditions.

What maps did we use?

We have chosen the recent out-of-copyright Ordnance Survey map series that we have complete coverage of. We plan to add more map series to improve the user experience while zooming.

At present, the seamless historical map is composed of map sheets from these Ordnance Survey map series:

How did we prepare the maps?

We have scanned paper map sheets of out-of-copyright Ordnance Survey maps. All the individual map sheets were cropped to remove their margins and then georeferenced in the OSGB coordinate system and transformed into web Mercator. They were then combined together to create one zoomable seamless map for Scotland, England, and Wales. We intend to add Ireland in the future as well. The tiles were prepared with a customized version of the MapTiler Engine application. The tiles are hosted at MapTiler Cloud.

Provided by the National Library of Scotland and MapTiler AG.