The Barnett's Map Project

New year and time for a new project.

Soon after my recent change of employment, I began to miss the element of frequent travel to random locations that my old job had provided. Most of the places I had been required to visit were in towns or cities off the tourist radar, probably considered not worth visiting, or more likely not considered at all, by the typical leisure traveller. Few would feature on a typical 'bucket list'. But regardless of this, all of them afforded some opportunity for some kind of  psycho-geographic wandering, even if it was just a short walk from a train station to the 'temporary workplace'. The apparent indifference, and in some cases hostility, to the wants of the typical tourist that many of these places displayed only enhanced their perambulatory appeal. Locations ranged from the industrial estates of Watford to pylon peppered golf courses and posh private roads around Moor Park. Quite often I was sent beyond London and East Anglia to towns like the relatively posh but low key Ashby-De-La-Zouch, or the deserted, but a bit scary after dark on a Wednesday, Sutton-In-Ashfield.  These and many other places I went to felt ripe for further exploration.

I think it was largely the randomness of my exposure to these places as well as their unsung, 'ordinary' or obscure qualities that subconsciously drove me to start accumulating a random collection street plans and maps. Mostly I've acquired these from the RSPCA bookshop round the corner from where I live. Their 50p 'map box' has provided a multitude of street plans published by Barnett's, SP Maps and Geographica. Most date from around the late 70s or early '80s judging by the featured adverts for local businesses.  Looking at these old maps, I found myself getting drawn in. A combination of intriguing features and unusually named locations, along with the adverts and the hand drawn pre-digital quality of the maps, permeated my imagination. With a map spread out on the floor, I could have a sort of analogue virtual reality journey around the town or city, based on whatever images were projected from it into my mind. A sort of static indoor psychogeography, which almost certainly bore no resemblance to the reality of the place either then or now.

When buying these maps I had some vague notion of actually getting around to visiting the towns at some point. If I was lucky it might coincide with a trip paid for by work. But this never seemed to happen. There was never a map/work coincidence and the possibility of this with the new job was virtually nil. Outside of work, time and fiscal constraints limited the possibilities.

The removal of my work based random travels was the catalyst in getting around to devising a plan that would allow me to continue to randomly go to places. Having listed the maps, I needed to apply some constraints that would allow visits within certain fiscal and temporal possibilities.

I decided to exclude all except Barnett's maps, based on the following reasoning: I had a good number of these, about 30. The colour on the front cover of each map seemingly had been decided at random, with no apparent connection to the place the map depicted, which seemed in fitting with the spirit of my project. The covers were basic but pleasantly easy on the eye, particularly when grouped together. The Geographica maps had great covers, but ones which projected a Scarfolkian dystopia and 1970s Geography Schools and Colleges Programmes. I wanted to avoid dystopia on my excursions if possible, or at least not set out to find it. All too often my walks, particularly my recent Kite excursion, had become dominated by the depressing features of new bland architecture, student/serviced accommodation and marginalisation. Partly for that reason the Barnett's Street plan of Cambridge was removed from the list. But also because there would be plenty of opportunity to do Cambridge through other means since I am already in it. The use of the 1980 solarised map I recently acquired, which is part of the same series as the Ipswich Town map documented elsewhere, could be a means of re-walking the city through a different lens.

The remaining parameters were decided as follows.

Journey restrictions

Places must be reachable by train, within a  journey time of of about two and a half hours each way. The journey should not be cost prohibitive. I decided about a forty quid limit was reasonable. This ruled out a few places and I was left with twenty one possibilities remaining as shown on the list below.

The draw and addition of new maps.

Once these restrictions had been applied, each map was given a number. I planned to visit one place per month, which would be selected the week leading up to the visit using a random number generator from the Internet. Any additional Barnet's maps found in charity shops in the interim would be added to the list and given a number so they could be included in the next draw.

Advance planning before the journey

No advance research of the place to be visited would be allowed, other than  finding out details of the train journey and examining the map the night before to identify places that looked or sounded interesting. This, along with any prior knowledge of the location gained 'pre-project' was all I would permit myself to know. Most were places I  had never, or only fleetingly,  visited and my knowledge of them minimal.

On location

The walk would aim to take in sites noted from my examination of the map as well as locations of the businesses in it's adverts. Any charity shops or second hand book shops I chanced upon would be checked out for additional Barnett's Street Plans, to be acquired and added to the list. Finally,  the walk would be confined to the area shown on the map.

On return

Soon after my return I would write up an account of my walk. Further research would be allowed during this process from any source (but most probably the Internet), to add retrospective clarity and/or confusion to what I had witnessed.

Following this process would allow twelve random places to be walked in some way over a year, and leave at least nine, but most likely more, unexplored by the end of it.

The first draw was made in the week leading up to Saturday 18th January. The outcome was Harpenden Map, which presented an added complication in that it also covered and contained a separate map of Wheathampstead, a nearby smaller settlement. This is a feature common to several of the Barnett's maps and one meaning a tie-breaker was required. In this case it was straightforward, Wheathampstead no longer has a rail station and Harpenden does. Two weeks after the walk I still haven't documented it, but I reckon I'm still in a period 'soon' after my return. Watch this space...