O. S. Maps 03

This KS3 Geography quiz looks at O.S. maps. In 1995, Ordnance Survey digitised the last of about 230,000 maps, making the United Kingdom the first country in the world to complete a programme of large-scale electronic mapping. A big advantage of digital maps is that they can be updated more easily and more often than paper printed maps.

Many people rely on GPS to navigate, however, when the signal is poor or the system breaks down, knowing how to navigate using an O.S. map is very useful. O.S. maps have very fine blue lines marked on them marking out a grid. These grid lines are also numbered. The vertical lines are called the eastings because the numbers increase as you move further east on a map. The horizontal lines are the northings. Each grid square on an O.S. map represents an area on the ground of 1km².