General Chat

I think the easiest thing would be to pick a town/village and choose one of the late 19th century editions of a map of the area thats close to a census year (e.g. on old maps you can see 1888-1890 maps). You can then use the census info along with the map to create any number of combinations. If you want to be really clever you can overlay a later map and later census data too to determine if things change.

Great minds think alike - can we get a grant do you think?

Thread Killer - thats certainly a possibility. It might be interesting to see if particular streets attracted people from particular places just as much as trades affected where you might live.

Saz - I think anything is possible so long as you have the data, the time and the money! I'm actually trying to put together some sort of proposal to apply for funding for my Masters! At the moment I'm exploring ideas as I want to move away from what I did for my undergraduate dissertation as I don't think I can take the idea any further.

The ethnic makeup of the east end is already well documented, has anyone watched the programme on earlier this week about Spitalfields, and how its proximity to where immigrants landed has affected its population over the years?

London is not as frightening as you might think! A few years ago I worked for English Heritage in London and that is where I got my first taste of GIS work. My project was to map out the scheduled ancient monuments in the City of London and overlay them on modern maps. I then had to create layers showing any excavations that had taken place in or around these monuments. The idea was to provide planners etc with an idea of what was scheduled, what previous investigations had been done in the area, and if there were any archaeological finds they should be aware of if they wanted to develop around the site.

It sounds really interesting, but very complicated! Look forward to hearing which aspect you decide to study, and how you get on.

At the end of the day the possibilites are endless! This is part of the reason I'm talking to people on here. I just wondered if anyone had ever thought about the area where their ancestors were and wondered whether some aspect of their lives was affected by the location of a specific service, their work or the cost of renting a property in specific areas.

Sarah you seem to have led the life I wanted - archaeology, genealogy fabby! I hope you have loads of luck with getting your money - maybe you could try sponsorship, I'm sure there's alot of interested parties. I did watch the Spitalfields programme which was interesting, I think it carries on next week/this week? I once watched a Dan Cruikshank (my hero) House Detectives programme when the went to an old Hugenot weavers house in East London and that was fascinating. I'm happily toddling along with the genealogy for now - once I retire in 20 years I might manage some serious research! Saz

I'd like to trace migrancy - you'd need info from various censuses - so which proportion of people stayed where they were born/moved away etc. Also mortality due to particular diseases/illnesses patterns in illegitimacy nel

Re the areas and trades - some of my rellies were Domestic coachmen and lived in mews houses, where they looked after the horses, then the cars in later years. Other rellies lived near the railway lines - where they worked/helped build. Then later in the 20's and 30's moved out to the suburbs, presumably to enjoy a slightly better life. Saz

What sort of patterns might you expect with illegitimacy? This is an open question and not directed at Nell in particular. Just interested to see what people think!

Can you nudge this tomorrow as I'm really interested in all these things and don't want to go but my other half needs the computer RIGHT NOW - typical. Gotta go. Saz

I'm sure we can nudge this tomorrow :) If all goes well discussion should continue into the night! I'm wondering if I should change the topic title to Maps and Genealogy as thats a bit broader....

My undergraduate dissertation was about Roman roadside stations that were known as Mansios (Mansiones is the proper plural of the word). Its thought they were set up by the roman government to provide overnight accommodation for people on official government buisness. Very little is known about them to be honest. What I did was to look at one possible mansio site in particular (a site I've worked on for about 7 years now) and map out the excavation results. I wanted to see if by looking at the dates of some of these features it might help to show if there was some correlation between its life history and what one would expect of a government building. I ended up arguing that as far as the building itself went it was rather similar to known villa sites. The other features, such as the ditches and wall slots might be a way of distinguishing whether or not the building was for farming or used in an official capacity. Villas are not found in settlements, just as farms tend to be on the outskirts of villages and towns. It could be argued that mansios, because they were basically hotels, are more likely to be found in settlements that could provide/maintain them than in more rural settings. The reason I can't take it any furhter is that there hasn't really been much excavation done on possible mansio sites and so I don't know if I'd be able to come up with enough examples to compare with my original.

hi I considered this some years ago and experimented using Autocad I even asked Ordance survey for permission to use threre old maps What you do is import the map image into a new drawing as a ratser file Then create laters for the census years You then can create attributes for respective family members You can even change fonts to make it look old and authentic. Yhe problem is you need accurate maps for each census year showing where yor relatives lived It is difficult getermining the "numerators walk" Like someone stated these prorammes are expensive. I di howver re draw the village where my ancestors came from and added new houses when they were built I now have this all detailed ut from 1841 to 1901 Beware it takes a long time to compile Paul

See I knew someone would explain how it all works better than I could! Thank you Paul! And you're right, it can take a while, which is why you have to be very specific about what you want to do and choose a small enough area!

Sorry about the spelling mistakes I should have put my specs on !!! Paul

Who cares about spelling mistakes? This isn't school :)

If you wanted a little more information about the Roman site I used as my case study, try these websites http://members.lyco(s.c)o.uk/tripontium/ http://www.roman-britain.org/places/tripontium.htm http://www.e-paranoid(s.c)om/t/tr/tripontium.html http://timetrail.warwickshire.gov.uk/detail.aspx?monuid=WA2788 as always... remove brackets :) Glad you're finding this interesting! I spend most of my time boring people to tears with it all!