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Terrain Studio

Bartholomew editions · maps printed 1902–06

The old half-inch maps, lit by the real ground.

20 places from John Bartholomew & Son’s layer-coloured maps of the early 1900s. Each is aligned to the ground and lit by measured terrain, so the hills stand up from the paper. Or choose an area of your own.

Browse the editions Request your own area ↗
The Lake District: the Bartholomew half-inch map of the central fells, keswick to coniston, with the fells shaded from measured terrain
The Lake DistrictEngland & Wales sheet 3 · printed 1903 · 48 × 32 km
Original sheets, printed 1902–06Aligned to the ground within metresLit by measured terrainOpen editions, not numbered

The editions

Mountains, downs, rivers and cities.

Each edition is designed at one size and sold at that size or smaller. A smaller print is the same map, printed smaller. Close-ups are made for A2 alone.

Priced like every Terrain Studio print, including UK delivery: A2 £95 rolled · £185 framed; A1 £120 rolled · £250 framed; A0 £175 rolled only.

Anywhere you choose

Your own area, proofed before you pay.

Place a frame anywhere in England, Wales or Scotland. We align the sheets it needs, send you a proof, and you pay only if you want the print.

Choose your area
  1. Position the frameA2 is 24 km on the long side, A1 33 km, A0 48 km. Portrait or landscape.
  2. We make a proofWe join and align the sheets your frame crosses and email you the proof.
  3. Pay only if you like itNothing is charged to request a proof. If you want the print, it costs the same as any edition of that size: from £95 at A2.

The mapmakers

Who was Bartholomew?

John Bartholomew & Son were mapmakers in Edinburgh. John Bartholomew senior, an engraver, set up the business in 1826.

Under John George Bartholomew (1860–1920) the firm made its name with layer colouring: each band of height printed in its own colour, from pale green on the low ground through deepening browns to the tops.

Their half-inch-to-the-mile maps became the firm’s best-known series, popular with cyclists and tourists. The company’s archive has been at the National Library of Scotland since 1995.

The series we use

  1. ½″
    Half an inch to the mile

    A scale of 1:126,720 — wide enough to hold a whole range of hills, close enough to name the villages.

  2. c.
    Printed about 1902–06

    Two series: England & Wales, and Scotland. Every edition names the sheets it comes from and the years they were printed.

  3. ◐
    Layer tints

    Green lowland rising to brown high ground, with water in blue. The tints are the original printers’; the light and shade are ours.

From the sheet to your wall

How the prints are made.

Each edition starts with an original Bartholomew sheet and ends as a flat print. The relief you see is light and shade calculated from the real shape of the ground; nothing on the paper is raised.

Because the sheets are joined where a frame needs them, an edition is framed around a place rather than cut to where an old sheet happened to end.

  1. 01
    The original sheet

    John Bartholomew & Son’s “Half-inch to mile” maps of England & Wales and of Scotland, printed about 1902–06, from the National Library of Scotland’s scans.

  2. 02
    Aligned to the ground

    Each sheet is fitted to the real ground to within metres, so the hills on the paper sit where the hills are.

  3. 03
    Lit by measured terrain

    Environment Agency LiDAR in England; Copernicus satellite elevation in Wales and Scotland. Height is exaggerated about twelve times so the hills stand up at this scale.

  4. 04
    Joined across sheet edges

    Where a frame crosses the edge of a sheet, the neighbouring sheet is joined in and the join is placed so place-names stay whole. That is why a frame can sit anywhere, not only on the old sheet lines.

  5. 05
    Printed

    Giclée on archival paper, made to order by our print partner. The border, title and scale are set new for each edition.