I came across a page on the BBC website today with some beautiful and very old maps of Scotland and it reminded me of the NLS website which I've never mentioned before here, time to change that. The images of the maps from the BBC website originate from the National Library of Scotland (NLS), the maps section to be precise. The NLS has around two million cartographic items and their map collection is the largest in Scotland and one of the biggest in the world. The NLS map site contains a selection of over 1,300 maps covering the first four centuries of the mapping of Scotland, including maps of the whole country, county maps, town plans and sea charts.

As soon as you've clicked some links in the maps section, you'll find out that this is something very special and one can easily get lost for hours once you dive into the various sections of maps. Some of these maps go back as far as 1560 and it's great to see how cartographers interpreted the land and sea back then. You can find many maps that show Islay in various shapes and sized including the surrounding islands. This resource is ideal for a rainy afternoon, providing you like maps of course, and it can also be very helpful for genealogists.

The picture shows Islay from a map created in 1595.

Tag: maps history