THE JOY OF MAPS

If I read the futurists right, then the long term usefulness of maps (in terms of folding sheets of paper) is not bright, for they are currently facing attacks on several fronts, mainly from car sat navs and from phone/pad hand-held thingies with sat navs. So if the nay-sayers are to be believed, then no more the joy of unfolding a crisp new sheet, spreading it on the wind-strewn grass, weighing down the corners with stones, and trying to work out where the devil I am and where I ought to be. And no more exploring by map, either, by which means you spot something interesting on your chart and immediately think, 'I'd like to go there.'
Mind you, the demise of books has also been forecast, and I am somewhat sceptical about that, so perhaps I ought to believe that maps, particularly OS maps, do still have a role to play.
I love the OS Explorer series, and the smaller sheets of the older Pathfinder series, and I am even fonder of William Faden's maps of Norfolk, published in 1797. In fact, I may even be contributing to the demise of printed mapping at large, for I have a digital version of Faden installed on my PC, a facility I use fairly regularly. Faden's sheets exude a cosy, even comforting, picture of what the county used to be like.
Actually, the two men largely responsible for the surveying for the Faden maps, and who were employed full-time on the project, were Thomas Donald and Thomas Milne; so by rights, I suppose, it ought to be known as the Donald-Milne map of Norfolk. Then, of course, surveyors were not always a welcome sight in the countryside, for they tended to be associated with rents and tithes and taxes, and with Parliamentary enclosures. Anyway, Donald and Milne had to establish a 'base' line and then select 'stations' in prominent places; and from that point on it was solid triangulation work, covering the entire county. It could not have been an easy task, bearing in mind the geographical difficulties they must have faced, and the public's scepticism. 
Faden's map of Norfolk came quite late in this country's county series, but it drew an instructive line in the sand at a time when the countryside was changing quickly. Parliamentary enclosure acts had been appearing fairly regularly since the 1750s, and the numbers increased steadily as the century came to an end. Faden, therefore - as far as Norfolk is concerned - provided the very yardstick against which these changes could be measured.
In fact the busy years for enclosures in Norfolk were, post-Faden , from about 1800 through to about 1820, which is why a second map - Bryant's - published in 1826, helped 'bookend' this sequence of events, allowing vital 'before' and 'after' glimpses of the effects of the enclosures of open field arable land, and commons and 'wastes.'
Among all the changes were some in the Fens, while it was realised that other changes were being prepared. Bryant noted the New Cut or Eau Brink that realigned the Ouse river south of King's Lynn, and said a causeway and a new bridge at what later became Sutton Bridge, which would allow wheeled passage over the Wash estuary, were 'planned.' In fact, this particular Act was passed in 1827.
Maps store information. They also provide information and describe the landscape, and show it to the viewer in much the same way that a bird sees it. And they allow you to find your place in the world. Will maps disappear, to be put on the museum shelf alongside other useful items such as oil lamps, the electric telegraph, and paraffin stoves? It is possible, but the world will be a somewhat duller place if they do.