Stories from Needingworth Mapping

This week I agreed to do two talks to two different groups on two very different subjects. As those who know me might have guessed, one of the talks was about mapping - to my local Huntingdonshire history society. I used the title above and concentrated on some of the stories I have explored when looking at and comparing maps of my One Place (Holywell-cum-Needingworth).

I showed old small scale maps and talked about three interesting stories they raise:
• Was there a (parish) Church/Chapel in Needingworth? (as well as in Holywell)
• Were there two roads to Holywell? (there is only one now)
• Why does the High Street bend?

I also showed old large scale maps, that a local fund had helped me get scanned, and OS 25 inch maps. I used my mapping system (M4OPS) to look at different buildings, fields, boundaries etc in the parish and had identified 57 places of interest. During the talk we looked at a few of these to see how they had changed over the years.

We had interesting questions at the end of the talk, and several people there expressed an interest in helping me explore the stories in more depth.

If anyone would like to see the presentation it can be found here, and the list of web references can be found here. If you would like to do anything similar in your own One Place, feel free to contact me at peter.cooper@one-place-studies.org.

Peter Cooper