Map Time Machine puts real scanned historical maps of any UK town on the classroom whiteboard, next to the map of today. Search your school’s own street, then press an era button to swap between the Ordnance Survey of 1885–1900, Bartholomew’s colour-shaded Edwardian map of 1897–1907, the post-war OS of 1945–65 and the present day — and in 113 places, a town plan drawn house by house — the view stays exactly where you left it, so children compare the same corner across a century.
It answers the question every local-history enquiry starts with: what was here before? Terraces where the retail park is. A railway where the cycle path runs. Docks, canals, mills, orchards, a village that became a suburb. Nothing to install, free to try, and big enough to read from the back of the room.
Our school, then and now
Find the school on the modern map, then step back. Was it there? What stood on the field? Children write two sentences on what has changed and one question they still want answered.
Why is the town here at all?
Rivers, bridges, harbours, coal, a crossroads. The Victorian sheet usually shows the reason far more plainly than the modern one, because the modern one is covered in what came afterwards.
Reading an old map
Symbols, keys, names in copperplate, field boundaries, mills and smithies. Excellent for map-skills work, and a genuine primary source rather than a worksheet about one.
How can I show old maps of my town to my class?
Search your town, press Launch, then use the era buttons at the top. The historic maps are real scanned Ordnance Survey sheets, shown over the same view as the map of today.
Which historical maps are included?
Four whole-UK eras: the OS One Inch 2nd Edition (1885–1900), Bartholomew’s Half Inch (1897–1907), the OS 1:25,000 (1945–65) and a current OpenStreetMap layer. 113 places also have a map of their own — Ordnance Survey town plans surveyed street by street, from Accrington to Yeovil, plus Roy’s Military Survey of Scotland (1747–55) and the War Office map of London drawn during the Blitz. Where one covers your view it appears on the row automatically. The historic sheets cover mainland Great Britain; where there is no old map of a place, the app tells you rather than showing a blank screen.
Is it free, and does it need installing?
Free to use, and nothing to install — it runs in the browser, and you need to be signed in. Printing a map spends one token; re-printing the same one costs nothing. Every teacher gets 20 free tokens on signing up, and Sage Teachers Pro gives you 30 a day.
What can I teach with then-and-now maps?
Local history enquiries, changes in land use, the growth of railways, canals and docks, map symbols and keys, grid references, and rural and urban change over time.
More geography and history: True Size compares countries on a real projection, GeoSpotter runs place-guessing rounds, and the Whiteboard gathers the teaching tools in one screen.
Historic map layers © National Library of Scotland, used under CC BY and CC BY-SA. Present-day map © OpenStreetMap contributors, © CARTO. Place search by Nominatim / OpenStreetMap.