President: Alistair Hugh
Vice President: Robin McAlpine
Immediate Past President: Bill Brown
Raith Probus Secretary: Allan Morton
Contact E Mail : RaithProbusSec@gmail.com
The Club meets on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 10:30am. We meet at Pathhead Parish Church Hall, 33 Harriet Street, Kirkcaldy KY1 2AG.
FUTURE TALKS:
If any club member has had a particularly interesting career or has a hobby and wishes to share by giving a talk, please contact any committee member.
.
Raith Probus Club Meeting Number 996
Pathhead Church 20th October 2026
President Alistair Hugh opened the meeting at 10:30hrs.
Introduction to Speaker:
Speaker: Ian Archibald
Topic: “History of Ordnance Survey” Vote of Thanks: Tom Reilly
Previous minutes, matters arising – None. REPORTS
Membership: Jack Cook
Reported the attendance numbers of 32 members present, 15 apologies and 0 guests.
IT: Jim Neilson Nothing to report.
Recorder: Bob Terras (not present) Nothing to report.
Probus Website: Bob Terras (not present) Nothing to report.
Treasurer: Charlie Low Nothing to report.
Welfare: Tom Reilly
I visited Bob Docherty on Tuesday the 13th of October accompanied by Bob’s wife Margaret and Ronnie McNeil. Bob appears to have settled well back into Marchmont care home after his discharge from Victoria Hospital’s ward 43 on the 14th of September. We spent over an hour chatting to Bob in the comfortable lounge, Bob was able to respond from time to time and was clearly delighted with the visit from his wife Margaret who is his constant support during this difficult time for them both.
I paid a visit to Alex Morton at his home in Crossgates on Wednesday the 14th of October. Alex is in the process of making a full recovery from having a medical procedure, which took place on Sunday the 13th of September at Victoria Hospital. A pacemaker ID Card has still to arrive. Mary, his wife, kept my strength up with coffee and a vast array of cake and biscuits. Alex was in fine form and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit with a lovely couple. Alex has been unable to attend Raith Probus meetings for some time, but he advised me that he likes to keep track of the club’s events through the meeting minutes supplied by our club secretary.
I was in touch with Douglas Hamill on Friday the 16th of October. Douglas has told me that he is unable to attend today’s meeting due to a health issue he has had for three weeks and hopes a second course of antibiotics will do the trick. Douglas would like to thank everyone who has been in touch and shown their concern.
Secretary: Allan Morton Nothing to report.
Vice-President: Robin McAlpine, 1000th Meeting Sub-Committee (15th Dec) Nothing to report.
STANDING ORDER REPORTS
Speakers: Charlie Low Looking at speakers for 2027.
Social: Ragnar Ingebrigtsen Nothing to report.
Calendar of Events:
| Saturday 24th October | Glasgow and Edinburgh have fields of remembrance for the last Saturday in October where they lay crosses in the gardens so we have decided to be the first branch to do so outside these cities. We will be holding our own field of remembrance between 11am and 11:30am on Saturday 24th October. You will be able buy crosses from the Museum and Poppy Scotland will also attend the event.
Contact Peter Shields. |
| Wednesday 18th
November |
Coffee Morning at Weavers, 10am, price £4.50.
Contact Bob Terras. |
| Saturday 21st Nov | Matinee performance from KAOS of “The Hunchback of Notre
Dame” at 2.30pm – tickets to be bought individually by members. |
CONVENERS REPORTS
Cycling: John Chalmers (not present) Nothing to report.
Further information: John Chalmers.
Gardening: Ron Steedman
The next Gardening meeting is Thursday, 19th November, 10 am at Kirkcaldy Golf Club. Our annual meal will be at the Weavers from 12 noon.
We meet again on 18th March 2027. Further information: Ron Steedman.
Golf: Robin McAlpine
The golf season is over but the trophies were presented:
The winner of the Peebles Stableford rounds was John Fairfull. The Heales trophy was also won by John Fairfull.
Further information: Robin McAlpine.
Lottery: Charlie Low Collecting for Nov/Dec.
Photography: Allister Todd
We held a photographic competition last month and Allister Todd was declared the winner after a review of the high standard of entries.
The winning pictures by Allister Todd
Competition results:
Allister Todd 0I, 05, 08. Winner, total Score for 3 Photos.
John Chalmers 02, 04, 13.
Ken Millar 07, 09, 11.
Ragnar Ingebrigtsen 03, 10, 15.
Bill Brown 06, 12, 14.
Next meeting – Thursday 29th October 10am at Kirkcaldy Golf Club. Further information: Allister Todd.
Snooker: Malcolm Walker
Styx Snooker Club. Every Friday: 11.00 to 13.00. Further information: Malcolm Walker.
Walkers: Ken Campbell (not present) – Phil Bate Date of Walk Tuesday 27th October.
Destination FORMONTHILLS – New Paths/New Water Features/
& New Ducks.
Meeting Point Formonthills Car Park at 10.00am. Length of Walk 3 miles ( 1 ½ -2 hrs. )
Terrain Generally flat with a few slopes on good paths. Refreshments Wetherspoons The Golden Acorn Glenrothes
P.S. The easy way to the car park.
A92 to the Car Wash at Cadam and then turn off and go along the road
across all the roundabouts and then turn off at the last one up Benvane Road.
Further information: Ken Campbell.
SPEAKER
The speaker was introduced by Jack Lowther and was Ian Archibald on the subject of “History of Ordnance Survey”. He was born in Kirkcaldy and was the Cartographic and GIS Information Systems Manager for the Crown Estate Office in Edinburgh. Prior to working for the Crown Estate, Ian had a varied career working all over the U.K. as a cartographic surveyor with the Ordnance Survey.
Today I will be discussing mapping the nation. The background to the Ordnance Survey is entwined with military history – even its logo incorporates a war department sign. It is the national mapping agency of Great Britain and one of the largest producer of maps. The Survey has mapped every corner of the country in great detail, one of the first country to be so mapped.
One of the very first maps of Scotland was shown on screen as drawn by an Italian cartographer, dating from 15th century, probably drawn from the sea. It is not very accurate when compared with modern satellite images with many west coast islands in the wrong place.
The Shetland Islands were typically shown in a box on the top of the map but this type of display has now been banned.
William Roy is recognised as the father of the Ordnance Survey. He was from Carluke, where there is a monument to him. His first map in 1747 was for military purposes to map the roads of Scotland just after Culloden. The mapping took between 1747 and 1755. A typical survey party would measure the lines of the roads and rivers with a small group of mappers. The circumferentor was a new instrument used along with measuring chains (40 to 50 feet long). Roads, rivers and lochs were mostly mapped using these tools. Local maps were also used to help with accuracy so that mountains and hills could have the direction of slopes delineated. The scale of these early maps was 1 inch to 1,000 yards.
A map of early Kirkcaldy was shown with very few roads and buildings existing at the time, even so what is there can still be seen in modern arial photographs.
The whole of the north of Scotland had been completely mapped when in 1752 William Roy was asked to do the whole country. He recognised that an accurate map of Great Britain was required. This led to the founding of a national organisation for mapping.
He was also interested in the earth sciences such as the mass of mountains where he developed techniques to enable contours to be shown on maps. This needed mathematics for accuracy. Contours started to appear on maps after 60 years once the techniques were mastered.
Roy recognised triangulation was required, at the time being used in Europe, which led to the development of the theodolite. An early instrument made in 1791 by Jesse Ramsden, from Halifax, took three years to build, weighed 200lbs (took six men to carry it) and cost £373. The Ordnance Survey was created on the date of purchase of the theodolite. Triangulation starts from a measured baseline, the first ever being where Heathrow Airport is now situated.
Just before they started the mapping exercise, there was political unrest in France with the possibility of invasion. Therefore maps of Kent and the south coast were created as the first maps from the new organisation at a scale of 1 inch to 1 mile. The Board of Ordnance was initially based in the Tower of London in the long armoury. Thomas Colby joined as he also recognised the need for very accurate baseline measurements. He developed a compensating bar to measure the baselines. The first job where the bar was used was in Ireland in 1824, where a baseline measuring 7.9 miles was used. When they later came to check these baselines electronically they were found to be accurate to within an inch.
Thomas Drummond from Scotland developed a light system where a light was shone from the top of mountains which worked up to distances of 68 miles.
After the Irish maps were published, the need for 6 inch maps was identified for England and Wales. Queen Victoria gave warrants to survey workers so they could roam the country to map all buildings without local permission.
The Ordnance Survey then moved from the Tower of London (after a fire 1841) to Southampton where they still reside.
In 1815 rapid development in Great Britain started due to the industrial revolution. Many towns increased in size very quickly. Maps were used to aid the improvement of sanitary conditions in towns, land evaluation, conveyancing, building of railways, urban expansion etc.
All towns with more than 4,000 population were mapped at a scale of 50 inches to a mile. In Kirkcaldy a map from 19th century includes the Wheatsheaf pub. A map from 1895, at a scale of 25 inches to a mile, shows existing details including the railway line at the south of the town.
A lot of the surveys were mostly undertaken by the Royal Engineers. Typically maps were produced on a county by county basis. All the Ordnance Survey staff were called up during the First World War where maps were becoming increasingly vital to highlight German positions.
During the war arial photography started to become more prominent. It was very dangerous work and the surveyors didn’t have any parachutes! Trench maps were created with up to 20 million being produced during the war.
Tourist maps were produced after the war at a scale of 1 inch to 1 mile. These did not include the national grid which did not appear until 1935. The grid is still used in modern sat-navs.
The measurement scale also changed to metres in 1938. A new scale of 50 inches to the mile was used for towns up to 60,000 population. Rural areas were surveyed at 25 inches to the mile and highland areas at 6 inches to the mile.
The whole of Britain started to be remapped in the late 1930s. The second world war temporarily halted this task but a total of 342 maps were produced during the war. Southampton was hit by bombs and many old maps were destroyed.
I joined the Ordnance Survey just after the British mapping exercise was completed but things changed quickly. A geodimeter distance meter was now used which could measure distances using high frequency. It was introduced in 1953 and could measure a line of around 35 km.
In 1962 the tellurometer was the first successful microwave electronic distance measurement device which could penetrate mist and fog up to 70 km. Maps however were still being drawn by hand by draughtsmen. A map of a town such as Kirkcaldy would take eight months from survey to publication. Photography then became more prominent in the map creation process where fine detail can be included from the photographs.
Commercialisation really took off in the 1980s with many types of maps being produced for specialised purposes including archaeological, utilities, roads and atlases.
We were given a year to produce sixty maps of Douglas on the Isle of Man with a team of six surveyors but were able to complete the task in eight months mostly using arial photography.
Many thousands of maps are now produced just for Scotland: 92,000 for towns, 83,000 for rural areas and 16,000 maps for other areas.
For arial photography the pilot would fly in a straight line while someone else pointed the camera out the aircraft. A 60% overlap would be used to ensure full coverage when the map was plotted using a specialised hand and foot driven machine to draft out the outline of all the buildings. That would then go to the field surveyor as it made his job a lot easier. Back in the office maps would then be generated from the photographs.
A large printing organisation was needed to print the paper maps. The problem was storing them and they soon became out of date due to changes in the towns or landscape. Screens were introduced to allow organisations such as local authorities to see the latest mapping data directly accessed from the Ordnance Survey office.
Digital mapping started in 1971 with everything changing to digital in 1979 including the drawing office. This allowed you to isolate features such as roads or houses or other selected objects as you required as they were specifically indexed in the system. If you put an arial photograph into the early computers, maps could be generated much more quickly for surveyors to then check out the fine detail out in the field. Surveyors also now had an electronic computer to carry all the maps with them.
We started to observe satellites from around 1969, this involved watching for them to pass across the sky to study the shape of the earth. The future came with GPS, global positioning, first created in the 1980s for US miliary use. In the 1990s multiple satellites could be used to pinpoint any position on the planet. A surveyor can link with up to eight satellites as he walks around the landscape. Maps are then updated instantly as data is uploaded from the field. Ground stations are used as a local position marker.
In 2011 a new building was opened for the Ordnance Survey, still present in Southampton today. Many organisations use their services such as central & local government, utilities, emergency services etc.
There has been a revolution in mapping in my lifetime and I particularly like what the Ordnance Survey have done recently as shown in the following example:
A short film showing the history of mapping Ben Nevis was then shown from the days of early maps to modern three dimensional arial views of the landscape available on the Ordnance Survey website ( https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ )
Questions
Does all this technology take the fun out of it? No, it is still enjoyable and I use GPS today for my exploring of ship wrecks in Burntisland.
I was in the prison service and as a young officer I was ordered to escort a Ordnance Survey person around the prison to see any alterations to the buildings. That’s when I found out it was all metric measurements. I was fascinated because he was taking down the alterations to the building as at that time all the prisons on the maps were just shown as an outline of the walls and nothing else as internal building were not allowed to be shown. Nowadays of course there are no secrets anymore due to photography – Yes, the war department would also ensure some sites were not included and this would apply to prisons as well. However German reconnaissance was already mapping many areas during the war.
Do you cooperate with Google and similar agencies? I have lost touch since I left so I don’t know if there are links between the Ordnance Survey and online mappers such as Google. Arial photography is going on all the time to keep maps up to date.
How does the three words positioning system work? On a local walk I did in a wooded area I tried to find a path to double back as I felt I was lost. I used my phone to find out where I was and where the next paths were. This shows the great use of modern technology in today’s world.
The Vote of Thanks was given by Tom Reilly. Thanks for Ian’s fascinating talk today which gives us an insight into the history behind how Ordnance Survey began from its inception in 1791 to the modern day requirements. Please show your appreciation for Ian.
NEXT MEETING
Date: 3rd November 2026
Speaker: Hamish Brown
Topic: “Scottish Odyssey”
Vote of Thanks: Charlie Low
AOCB:
Invitation to Dementia Event – Kirkcaldy Probus – Mike Stevenson. He will come along to a future meeting to invite any of us to a future event being held in December.
The meeting closed at 11:47hrs.
Allan Morton
Secretary
USEFUL LINKS AND CALENDAR
Website: probusonline.org/raith-of-kirkcaldy/
Facebook: facebook.com/RaithProbusClub
Calendar: calendar.google.com/calendar …
Secretary Email: RaithProbusSec@gmail.com
Walkers: Led By – Phil Bate Tuesday 27th October.
Destination FORMONTHILLS – New Paths/New Water Features/
& New Ducks.
September 2026 Photo Competition
MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
September 2026 Weavers Coffee Day
September 2026 Strathpeffer Bus Tour
Royal Highland Hotel Model Titatanic Stair
3 Amigos Cruising
Sept 2026 Cupar, Riverside East / Tarvit Pond / Tarvit Farm.Walk
25th August Lade Braes St Andrews
18th August 2026 Curry Club
Falkland Walk
Bill Brown Dumfries Gardens
2017 2026