(Dumfries, from Pont's map of Nithsdale)
New website, book, exhibition and seminar
Next Project Pont Seminar
Printouts
Presentation on Project Pont at first AGM.
An index to Pont place-names.
In 1996 the National Library of Scotland initiated Project Pont to stimulate research on Timothy Pont and his maps. Pont's work dates from the 1580s and 1590s, the first time Scotland was mapped in any detail. 77 manuscript maps survive on 38 sheets and are a unique research source for late 16th century Scotland landscape and culture. Pont's manuscript maps were the basis for over half of the printed maps in volume 5 of Blaeu's Atlas Novus (1654), Scotland's first atlas.
The five-year project is drawing to a close with the fifth and final seminar on 29 September.
On 10 August a book, website and travelling exhibition are formally launched, but are available from 6 August.
Issue 9 of the Project Pont newsletter has just been published and gives details of all these events. The newsletter is available free of charge from the Map Library - maps@nls.uk.
See below for details of these four activities.
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1. THE PONT MAPS WEBSITE
http://www.nls.uk/pont
This new website is devoted to Timothy Pont's manuscript maps of Scotland and scanned images of all the maps are on display. MrSID software has been used to enable zooming to show small details on the maps. As the maps can be difficult to interpret for the general user, there are descriptions and commentaries for each map, assistance with handwriting and symbols, as well as selected highlights. Specialist researchers can go straight to the map images. The site includes biographical information on the main people associated with the maps, notes on the value of the maps for research on a range of themes, (such as towns, placenames, architecture), and a detailed bibliography
We welcome comments on the website to - maps@nls.uk
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2. BOOK
Project Pont aimed to encourage multi-disciplinary research on the Pont maps, and the result is a collection of essays by ten leading experts on various themes. The book explores not only the background to the maps and their place in European mapping, but also the light they shed on late Renaissance Scotland.
THE NATION SURVEY'D, edited by Ian C. Cunningham, is published by Tuckwell Press in association with the National Library of Scotland. 172pp, 150 b&w and col illus. ISBN 1-86232-198-1. Price 20.00 GBP.
Contributors are Dr Jeffrey Stone (Pont's life and maps), Prof. Michael Lynch (historical context), Christopher Fleet (writing & texts), Dr Simon Taylor and Roy Wentworth (placenames), Prof. Christopher Smout (woodland), Ian Mitchell (mountains), Prof.Charles McKean (architecture), Dr Pat Dennison (towns), Prof. Charles Withers
(European chorography and national identity), To order copies contact Public Programmes - j.cromarty@nls.uk
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3. TRAVELLING EXHIBITION
A small travelling exhibition on ten panels will be on display in the National Library of Scotland (George IV Bridge Building) from 6 August - 21 September, 2001.
MAPPING THE REALM, Timothy Pont's portrait of Renaissance Scotland, tells the story of Pont's maps using scanned images of the maps - the originals are too vulnerable to travel, although an example of an original manuscript (Stirlingshire) will also be on display in the National Library.
The exhibition moves to the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 24-29 September, then will be touring throughout Scotland for over a year from October. For details of exhibition tour venues contact Public Programmes - j.cromarty@nls.uk.
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4. SEMINAR
The last Pont seminar PONT'S WORLDS is being organised jointly by the National Library and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and will be held in the Royal Society on Saturday 29 September 2001. The theme of this seminar is Pont's maps and mapping in a wider context. The seminar, including lunch, costs 20.00 GBP. For a booking form and further information contact the Map Library - maps@nls.uk
Speakers and papers are:
Project Pont: facilitating access and avoiding wet feet
Dr Jeffrey Stone (Aberdeen University)
"Gathered out of Mr Timothee Pont his papers": Robert Gordon's maps deriving from Pont's original survey
Chris Fleet (National Library of Scotland)
Pont and the Antonine Wall
Prof. Lawrence Keppie (Glasgow University)
Family, church and nation: Timothy Pont's ecclesiastical context
Dr Alan Macdonald (Dundee University)
Over the border: contemporary mapping in England
Dr Catherine Delano Smith (London University)
Pont the chorographer: mapping and early modern geographical description
Prof. Charles Withers (Edinburgh University)
PONT IN LANARKSHIRE
The next PROJECT PONT SEMINAR will be held at New Lanark on SATURDAY 1 APRIL 2000, 10.15 - 16.30.
This seminar, the fourth in the series of Project Pont Seminars organised by the National Library of Scotland, explores a wide range of subjects relating to Timothy Pont's 16th century maps of Scotland.
Topics include architecture and archaeology, towns and place-names (of Lesmahagow in particular), surveying methods and symbols, and analysis of the maps themselves. Three papers are also of local Clydesdale interest. Following requests after the last seminar, Jeffrey Stone will start the day with an overview of Pont and his maps, particularly aimed at people who have not attended previous seminars.
COST £15.00 per head to include: sandwich lunch, morning & afternoon tea or coffee;
registration forms available from NLS (Map Library), 33 Salisbury Place, Edinburgh EH9 1SL, Tel 0131-226 4531.
PONT MANUSCRIPT MAPS: PRINTOUTS FROM DIGITAL IMAGES, PHOTOGRAPHS AND PHOTOCOPIES
At present digital images of Timothy Pont's manuscript maps (produced in the 1580s and 1590s) may be viewed only in the Map Library, National Library of Scotland. Please telephone first if you wish to view the images in the Map Library, or require advice about technical requirements, to ensure that staff and equipment will be available (0131-226-4531 ext 3413).
Different sizes and qualities of printouts are available; prices quoted do not include VAT or postage/packing and apply until the end of March 2000.
STANDARD PRINTOUTS
• Customised colour printouts using an inkjet printer (resolution 300dpi) - Size up to A4 (£1.40)
• Customised black & white digital photocopies (resolution 600dpi) - Sizes A4 (£0.48) and A3 (£0.56)
• Customised black & white digital photocopies (resolution 300dpi) - Sizes A1 (£2.10) and A0 (£4.20)
These printouts are suitable for research purposes but not for display or publication, when a higher resolution may be required. A3 and A4 sizes are recommended for enlarged details, but not for whole manuscripts. For A3 and A4 standard printouts, orders will normally be processed within 1-2 working days of the order, depending on staff and equipment availability. A0 and A1 printouts may take 1-2 weeks.
HIGH QUALITY COLOUR PRINTOUTS
High quality colour printouts on glossy paper (resembling photographic prints) are available at a resolution of 720 dpi using an inkjet printer. These printouts are suitable for display or publication and can show finer detail. Although the Pont manuscripts are not in colour (except for some "grid" lines in red, believed to have been drawn to help copying and engraving) colour printouts do sometimes assist with interpretation, especially when different inks have been used.
Diana Webster
Head of Map Library
National Library of Scotland
33 Salisbury Place
Edinburgh EH9 1SL
(Dumfries, from Pont's map of Nithsdale)
At our first AGM, Margaret Wilkes and Chris Fleet from the National Library of Scotland Map Library brought along a powerful computer and overhead projector in order to give a short presentation on the digitisation of the Pont maps of Scotland, as part of 'Project Pont', a multi-disciplinary initiative to explore Timothy Pont's late 16th century maps of Scotland. These maps throw a unique light on all aspects of 16th-century Scotland, its history, geography, architecture, landscape, as well as its place-names. They are being scanned into a computer, and the resultant digitised images allow them to be studied with greater ease and clarity. They constitute a vitally important resource for anyone working with place-names - in fact the compilation of a gazetteer of all of Pont's place-names is one of the aims of 'Project Pont'. All 38 manuscript sheets have been digitised, and although Pont's maps do not cover all of Scotland, there is good coverage of the north-west Highlands, Moray, Banff, Aberdeenshire, Perthshire, Angus, Dumbartonshire, Lanarkshire, and Dumfriesshire. An index sheet showing their geographical coverage is reproduced in Dr. J. Stones book, The Pont manuscript maps of Scotland, 1989.
For more information on Project Pont contact Map Library Manager, NLS, 33 Salisbury Place, Edinburgh EH9 1SL; Tel:-0131 226 4531 ext. 3418, or call in at the Map Library at the above address.
View the National Library of Scotland "Project Pont" web page.
AN INDEX TO PONT PLACE-NAMES
(Spring 1998)
Dr Jeffrey Stone(University of Aberdeen) has published extensively on the late 16th- and 17th-century maps of Timothy Pont and Robert and James Gordon, many of which were published by the Amsterdam printer Johannes Blaeu in 1654. He is compiling an index of all the place-names on these maps, and here he describes this project in more detail:
At the second annual conference of Project Pont, held in the Geography Department of Edinburgh University on 29 November 1997, I reported briefly on a pilot project to investigate a possible route towards the compilation of an index of the place-names of Scotland contained in the Blaeu atlas of 1654 and its associate manuscript maps. With the publication of The Pont Manuscript Maps of Scotland- Sixteenth century origins of a Blaeu atlas (Map Collectors Publications, Tring, 1989), only the extant manuscript maps by Robert and James Gordon remain unpublished. Otherwise, the Pont/Gordon/Blaeu sequence of maps is now readily accessible, containing some 20,000 place-names for sixteenth and possibly early seventeenth century Scotland. An index might further improve accessibility.
In initiating the pilot project, the minimum requirements of users were assumed to be, firstly, that it was comprehensive, containing every legible place-name on any of the maps by Pont, the Gordons and Blaeu. Secondly, that the end-product should be both in hard copy and in a form which is compatible with modern methods of information retrieval. Thirdly, that every entry can be located on its source document or documents, i.e. that it would be insufficient merely to list the documents on which the place-name appears. Incidentally, the latter requirement significantly increases the work involved in compiling the index.
The computing expertise in the project is being provided by Mr Lawrence Maclean, of the Department of Geography, Aberdeen University, who selected the ARC/INFO package with the above requirements in mind. The package allows Ordnance Survey grid co-ordinates to be generated for any point which is identified on OS 1:50,000 cover. Hence each place-name is referred to a point on the relevant OS map, either by recognition of place-name continuity or by selecting a proximate location which had been associated with another Pont/Gordon/Blaeu place-name. However, publication of data derived in this way may require the consent of the Ordnance Survey.
The first trial was conducted with a Gordon manuscript map (G58) and the relevant parts of Blaeu maps covering the eastern part of the Borders. That particular manuscript is relatively legible and place-name continuity in that part of Scotland is very high, so that results were encouraging. The project is currently being extended to Pont manuscript maps nos. 1 to 4, covering parts of north-west Scotland, where transcription and identification is much more difficult.
Results to date suggest that the larger project is feasible, but continues to be faced with operational problems, including the legibility of some of the manuscript maps, cross-checking of the names which may appear in several sources, recognition of place-name continuity where it exists, and above all, the time factor. It is envisaged that the full project may take as much as five or seven years to complete, with no external funding foreseen. In the present circumstances of purely voluntary work inputs and only goodwill by way of institutional support, the vulnerability of the completed project cannot be disguised.
What would be very helpful at this stage would be to know more about the demand for and the potential utilisation of the data thus generated, to ensure that a labour-intensive project meets real needs. Also, it would be very helpful to hear from anyone who has had occasion to systematically transcribe the place-names from Pont, Gordon and/or Blaeu maps for any particular locality in Scotland. Where local knowledge or other expertise has already been brought to bear, the transcription of the place-names is likely to be more accurate than that of the project's authors. A list of any such names in hard copy, with an indication of the source map and the locality would be a great help, but if the places have been identified with modern counterparts, then that would be even more helpful
Anyone who can help in any of the above ways, please contact Dr Jeffrey Stone, Dept. of Geography, Aberdeen University, Aberdeen AB24 3FX.