The Year of the Map

the long version

The Year of the Map presents a bygone scene with scrupulousness and attention to detail; and as a survey of a Wiltshire town in the 'Hungry Forties' it provides a contributory thread to the fabric of English social history. In the 1960s, when Gee Langdon moved into her house in Woolley, just outside Bradford on Avon, she discovered a vast map of the town, dated 1841, hanging on the wall of an outhouse. She was inspired to research the events that took place locally during that year.