Announcing the launch of Know Your Place in Wiltshire, Bath & NE Somerset and Gloucestershire

Know Your Place project puts three more counties on the map

For the first time, historic maps and heritage data of Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Bath and North East Somerset are now freely available online in one place, thanks to the latest expansion of Know Your Place West of England.

From Stonehenge to Swindon, Keynsham to the Cotswolds, Salisbury plain to the spa towns of Bath and Cheltenham – you can now discover how these places have transformed over time.

 

What this means for the West

Now covering more than 4360 square miles, Know Your Place allows you to explore some of the most famous landmarks from the region’s history, from the World Heritage sites at Bath and Avebury, to Wiltshire’s White Horses and the unique landscapes of the Forest of Dean and Severn Estuary that are the focus of other Heritage Lottery Funded projects.

 

You will also be able to upload and share your own information about the area straight onto Know Your Place helping to build a rich and diverse community map of local heritage for everyone; from school children to family historians, planners to enthusiasts of community heritage.

Don’t just take our word for it

Here is what some of our users in Bristol and South Gloucestershire have said about Know Your Place:

• “Be like Doctor Who and travel back in time.”
• “If you’re interested in local history you can’t beat this site.”
• “I like the thousands of little windows it provides into the past; all based on specific identified places on the map. It is a wonderful tool for local history research.”
• “I love the layers of maps; it demonstrates so well how the area has grown and developed.”
• “It’s free and infectious once you’re in you become absorbed; brilliant!”

There’s still lots more to do… 

But there’s a lot more work to do to publish additional Know Your Place data for these three new counties so watch this space. We are pleased to be collaborating with the following groups:

More than 50 project volunteers are working hard to prepare further historic tithe, enclosure and town maps, which we will add onto Know Your Place over the coming months.

We are also working closely with Historic Environment Record officers to to publish Historic Environment Record (HER) data for Gloucestershire,  refine the HER data already available for Wiltshire and B&NES and to share HER data for North Somerset and Somerset in future.

Museums and archives across the region are identifying items from their collections that will begin to be mapped onto Know Your Place once their county is online.

Staff changes in the team means there is a temporary halt on further development work on Know Your Place. Work will begin again once we have a new developer colleague in post and we hope to have a firmer timescale for this over the coming month.

 

You can now find the following counties on Know Your Place: Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath & NE Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. As more people use and contribute to Know Your Place, the website will continue to grow, so do keep coming back to watch it evolve.

We expect to map remaining areas and information layers by Summer 2016. You can follow our progress by signing up to our project newsletter.

 

Exhibition coming soon!

We are also designing  an upcoming touring exhibition that will visit 12 venues across the West of England starting in late October 2016, celebrating our rich heritage and helping to raise awareness of the fabulous new resource of Know Your Place.

 

Ready to explore?

Simply go to the map and click on the county you want to visit. Please note that the areas mapped contain a large amount of data, so loading data may require a little extra time when you first visit.

Visiting for the first time? Get started with confidence by following our helpful instructions. You can return to these from Know Your Place at any time, by clicking on the question-mark.