it used to be all fields round here, you know

Anyone else find maps completely fascinating? Especially old maps, especially where things on the ground have changed significantly since the map was published? No? Just me? Well, screw you, it's my blog.

This is a postscript to my inconsequential ramblings about last weekend. In the upstairs corridor of the pub we stayed in there was a framed map of the local area from, I would guess, the 1930s or so. It took me a minute or two to realise why I didn't recognise the landscape, and then I realised it was because there was no lake. My puny photographic skills were inadequate to the task of photographing a glass-fronted picture from close range in dim light, but as luck would have it I had a professional photographer on hand to help out.

Wimbleball Lake was constructed in the late seventies; some pictures of the construction can be found here.

Here's a snapshot of the relevant area on the current 1:25000 OS Explorer map:


Here's the same area in an old UK road atlas I've got, which I would date approximately at the late 1950s (no motorways, and Dulverton has a railway station, so it's definitely pre-1960s):



Here's the same map, with the present location of the lake sketched (pretty roughly) in:



Here's the expertly snapped old map from the pub wall:


This one has some contours on it which almost suggest the outline of where the lake would eventually go. Here's the same map with a rough sketch of the present lake location, just in case it's not obvious: