I’ve received a few requests to do the Google Earth overlay trick with yesterday’s Pelsall North and West Brownhills map, so I’ve done just that. Please bear in mind that this was a scan of a paper map, which is old, and hasn’t been geometrically or geographically corrected, therefore distortions will be present. Trust no apparent correlation between surface features and draft to be accurate, or be an verbatim depiction of what lay where. Having said that, it should be accurate to 10m or so.

I guess I’m just pointing out that if the overlay says there’s a mineshaft under your house, it’s not necessarily the case, and panicking is probably not the answer.

The overlay applied in Google Earth. By downloading the overlay, transparency of it can be adjusted. Click for a larger version.

You can download a copy of the overlay (2.65Mb) for use within Google Earh by clicking on the link below…

Pelsall North and West Brownhills 1902.kmz – hosted at Box.com

There are instructions on how to use overlays like this one in my previous post “Mapping the past’. Note that you can also use this file as a basemap in most modern, mapping handheld Garmin GPS units – GPSmap 62 series, Colorado, Oregon, Dakota etc. Again, I can’t guarantee accuracy, but it shouldn’t be too bad. Just take care not to fall down any holes whilst using it…