Historic_Townships_of_Wales_1st_Edition (FeatureServer)

View In: Map Viewer

Service Description: This dataset shows the historic Townships of Wales as recorded by the Ordnance Survey in the late 19th Century.

Service ItemId: d8892f995b8f4495b6813d8c8918f9ce

Has Versioned Data: false

Max Record Count: 2000

Supported query Formats: JSON

Supports applyEdits with GlobalIds: False

Supports Shared Templates: True

All Layers and Tables

Layers:

Description:

Townships (Welsh: 'tref', Latin: 'villa') are the smallest civil administrative unit that was used across Wales. Like many old forms of administrative unit, the formation of the townships is unknown. As the townships form the basis for the commotes, which themselves are sub-divisions of cantrefs it is certain that that are contemporary with these territorial entities are early medieval in origin. Townships usually contain some form of settlement (such as village or small town) and usually a church. Townships played a key role in the administration of the local community in matters such as taxation and legal proceedings.

Townships are often the main unit referred to in medieval extents and surveys and there are even records of some townships being further divided, such as in the township of Maenan on the River Conwy, but these are rare. Townships remained in use until the mid-nineteenth century, and where used for all manner of legal and secular administration. They where even widely used in the 1851 census. The earliest large-scale Ordnance Survey (OS) mapping for Wales recorded some of their boundaries (Flintshire, eastern parts of Denbighshire and some of Glamorgan), but OS stopped recording them c.1872. Soon after they dropped out of everyday use, but they remain the single most important unit for understanding the geography of Wales. There is currently no dataset accurately depicting all township boundaries in Wales, and this is the first attempt to accurately map these areas in a digitally accessible format.

This dataset was created in Esri ArcPro 3.2.1 and reflects the historical hundred boundaries as recorded on the Ordnance Survey 6" to the Mile County Series Mapping surveyed for Wales between 1867 and 1888.

Copyright Text: © Hawlfraint y Goron: Comisiwn Brenhinol Henebion Cymru. © Crown copyright: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales.

Spatial Reference: 27700 (27700)

Initial Extent:

Full Extent:

Units: esriMeters

Child Resources: Info SharedTemplates

Supported Operations: Query ConvertFormat Get Estimates