Old Historical Maps of Garforth
I am somewhat facinated by maps. These days that usually means messing about with satellite imagery and GPS devices, but there is also a wealth of information to be found in old maps.
The thing about a map or aerial photograph (this page will analyse both) is that it captures a single moment in an ever changing world, so no sooner than the map is made it is out of date.
Therefore, whilst old maps can be largely invalid from a navigational point of view they do allow us to see where things were that no longer exist, how settlements spread, what old names for roads are and so on.
These maps are all scaled down, click them to enlarge to a full sized view! Please be aware that some of the maps are quite large so I wouldn’t advise viewing them on dial-up. Also make sure that your browser (Internet Explorer especially) isn’t automatically scaling the image to fit your screen.
Unknown
I do not know the age of this first map, but I would estimate it to be from the 1700s judging by the style. It shows the whole area all the way up to Wetherby so does not offer us many details of the Garforth area.
1770
This map from 1770 offers us a little more detail from the area. It is difficult to know how accurate this map is but interestingly it shows roads in a completely different layout to the other maps. Specifically, Church Lane is shown as being joined on to Wakefield Road with a southwesterly road—this road seems not to exist on later maps which suggests it was just a track.
The whole area where Main St. now lies is drawn as forrest with the area to the South of Church lane shown as clear, probably indicating farm land.
1850
This map from 1850 is one of the first ones drawn up for the Ordnance Survey and, in true OS tradition, contains not only a lot of detail but is also very accurate (as we will discover).
Because this map is more detailed, we can do some interesting things with it. Firstly, this is a trace of the map into a vector format. This map excludes the field boundaries and so allows us to see only the developed roads as well as footpaths, halls and houses a little more easily.
The final and most interesting thing that we can do with this map is a satellite overlay in order to assess how accurate the original mapping was. Because the satellite image is a photograph there is no margin for error as there is with a hand drawn map, therefore we can compare the 19th century map against an ideal.
Of course, roads do widen and move over time but by lining up key static points such as Town End, Garforth Bridge and Kippax Lane End we can gain a pretty good idea of accuracy.
When I did this I was frankly amazed—I thought that the map may line up vaguely with the satellite image, but the results are almost spot on as you can see below. This means that the mapping done in 1850 (without the use of any arial imagery or computer equipment) was very accurate indeed.
We can see quite a lot of interesting things from this, including how ancient field boundaries have had an effect on modern housing development. Even the playing fields of Garforth Community College are following field boundaries that existed in 1850 if you look closely. You can also see the boundary of Glebelands behind the Church following ancient field boundaries.
1860–1910
This is another OS map which was completed sometime between 1860 and 1910. At first glance it looks very similar to the map above from 1850, however there are changes that can be seen.
For example the quarries on the Cliff have changed to ‘old quarries’, indicating the period in which they were worked out, and East Garforth station has also appeared. Unfortunately this is only a low resolution image, I need to find a higher quality version of it.
1962
This next image is an aerial photograph (not a satellite image) from 15th November 1962. This is one of the most interesting images here for me as we are now entering modern history.
This photograph is slightly harder to put into context with it being aerial as the image is not a top down map, and we therefore can’t identify the shapes of the major roads very easily. Also, it’s difficult to place roads because there are so many missing! A lot of housing went up in Garforth during the 60s (pretty much all of East Garforth really) so this image is a real treasure.
The image is taken from the South side of Garforth looking roughly North. The dark line across the bottom of the image is actually the Old Railway Line, and above that the Grange Estate can be seen partially built. On the mid right of the screen you can see the church and Oak Crescent, ending at Station Fields (when it was a field!). The Long Meadows estate and much of the Oak Estate had not yet been built when this photograph was taken. You can also see that the preliminary earthworks for Brunswick Gardens to the right of the cricket pitch have been completed, but no houses built there yet.
This is the same image but with major roads outlined and an up to date in picture map showing the area covered to make it easier to identify the various roads.
2000
This satellite imagery is from roughly 2000–2002 and is the imagery that you can view in tools such as Google Local and Google Earth. This composite image is scaled right down in order for people to be able to download the file (the original file is 560Mb), but if there is a particular area that you’re interested in then you should download Google Earth and use that to view the area up close.
This is a full resolution sample of Town End showing the quality of satellite imagery available for this area.
