O.S. 404, Character of writing for Ordnance Survey plans, was probably first issued to Ordnance Survey staff in 1881. This may have been the impetus behind a decision of Colonel R.H. Stotherd, during his years as Director General between 1883 and 1886, to write How and where, a booklet which offered to the public a description of Ordnance Survey maps in terms of their scales, and the various alphabets and characteristic symbols in use upon them. That this was perhaps semi-official is suggested by the fact that it was published not by the Survey, but by one of its agents, Edward Stanford. The notion of keeping this information officially in the public domain was perpetuated when in 1888 the Ordnance Survey published the first of a sequence of Descriptions pamphlets of their own. This developed into a publication offering information of the maps available at each scale, from the smallest to the largest, with emphasis on the County Series and Town scales, before continuing with general remarks, including lists of abbreviations, characteristics and symbols in use, initially replicated from that given in O.S. 404. Specimens of maps at each scale in use were introduced at the end of the booklet from about 1897 onwards.
This somewhat formal document survived several revised printings until replaced after the first world war by separate Descriptions of large- and small-scale maps, in a new format obviously intended to have much more popular appeal, enhanced by cover illustrations and lettering by the artists Arthur Palmer and Ellis Martin. A third series, describing medium-scale maps, was added in 1947. The final editions of these booklets at all three scales appeared in the mid-1950s, and only once since has the Ordnance Survey attempted any similar publication in book form, with the appearance, on a much grander scale than any of its predecessors, of J.B. Harley’s Ordnance Survey maps a descriptive manual (Southampton: Ordnance Survey, 1975).
The Charles Close Society is presenting this list of descriptions as one of a series in which it is intended that comprehensive details of all the serial publications of the Ordnance Survey will be permanently available to anyone who requires access to this information. The intention is to create a union listing of all known copies of these Descriptions until the second world war, after which the large number of surviving copies make this impractical.