Comberton Village Map

My Comberton village map (version 16f of September 2022) is available in several forms. Click on the Size to download or open. See also further down for village highlight maps, habitat compartment maps.and Explorer maps.

File Type	Size
an Adobe Acrobat (.PDF) file with full content (best one for printing)	(4.3MB)
a high resolution (400dpi) PNG image file	(2.9MB)
a medium resolution (200dpi) PNG image file	(1.0MB)
a low resolution (100dpi) PNG image file	(0.3MB)
an Adobe Illustrator cs4 file	(1.6MB)
a zip file of an ESRI File Geodatabase (FGDB - current master version)	(0.8MB)
a zip file of ESRI map documents (MXD - to accompany the FGDB)	(0.5MB)
a zip file of ESRI LYR layer files (MXD - symbology definitions)	(0.5MB)
a zip file of a set of ESRI shapefiles (for transfer into other GIS or mapping software)	(0.3MB)
an Adobe Acrobat (.PDF) file of the village centre at 1:7500, filling the A3 space (for use on a tea towel!)	(3.6MB)
an Adobe Acrobat (.PDF) file of the whole parish at 1:13000, filling A3 Portrait)	(7.4MB)

Map Creation

• My wife Margaret was Clerk to the Comberton Parish Council (3rd tier of local government), and wanted a village map for various purposes such as a tree survey. Like all significant places, Comberton lies at the intersection of four OS large scale maps!
• Frustration with Ordnance Survey's map data licensing. At the time the parish councils were not covered by the OS service level agreement with central government, so when I looked into using OS data to produce a village map it would have been horrifically expensive and dificult. OS also wanted payment every time the map was printed, which was unworkable.
• I'd recently taken over as Product Manager for Laser-Scan's LAMPS2 mapping software, so was interested in exercising it in a 'real-world' project.

Minor updates were done in October/November 2002, at which point it was adopted by the parish council and two large copies installed in the village (by village pond and near Meridian school). A more major update and revised design was done in October/November 2006, while Paul was working in the USA for ESRI (but visiting Comberton). It was updated again in June 2009, and again in July 2013. A more major update was completed in 2015. It was revised again in late 2019, and again in 2020 and 2021 (Coronavirus time).

The basic steps in the creation of the map were:

• The starting point was to take as a base the out-of-copyright pre-war (mainly 19th century!) Ordnance Survey County series maps. I could not use the first national grid series as it was (then) still in copyright. The maps were obtained as A3 copies from the University Library in Cambridge), and A4 sections were scanned on an HP scanner to give TIFF files.
• Coordinates were then captured for up-to-date road centre-lines from GPS satellite observations taken with my handheld Garmin eTrex GPS unit while cycling the road and track network. These waypoints were downloaded as National Grid coordinates on OSGB36 datum, to my PC using Gartrip software.
• Some well-defined points selected from these positions were used as control points so that the original raster map could be rectified by warping, to fit the road network, using a projective biquadratic transformation
• The resultant National Grid raster map was then vectorised by digitising from screen backdrop to capture field boundaries, streams, etc, many of which were largely unchanged since 1911!
• Amateur aerial photography was then taken with an Olympus XA2 and an Olympus Mju II from a Cessna 152 at about 1000 feet (out of the open window!). These images were used to update the vector map.
• The final step was to add road names, places, and points of interest from my local knowledge, helped by review comment from other villagers.

The resulting map is intentionally free of Crown or other third party copyright. Paul Hardy grants free use of this map for non-commercial purposes which benefit the village of Comberton, provided that the copyright note and a link to this page is retained. For any commercial use, contact Paul Hardy, 15 Kentings, Comberton, CAMBRIDGE, CB23 7DT, paul at paulhardy dot net. Corrections of errors and ommissions are welcomed.

The current version is A3 landscape format, and includes two images from the village sign (photography by Paul Hardy).

Local accuracy is around 10 metres. The coordinate system is British National Grid (lower left of map is TL3755), with grid spacing of 500m. This map is provided 'as is', based on best effort with limited resources and is not definitive. If you want a definitive map, go to Ordnance Survey!

Archived older versions are available for the August 2001 version (7), November 2002(8), November 2006 (9), June 2009 (10), July 2013 (12) and July 2015 (14) at my archive site.

Tea Towel

Parish Map

Comberton Highlight Maps

As well as the main village map, I've done a series of 'Highlight' maps of particular areas of interest within the village. These are at much larger scale - around 1:500 at A3 size. The main village map was used as base, with accuracy improved locally by observation and ground survey (pacing out!). Further detail such as major trees and visible graves were added, all to an accuracy of about +/-3m.

The first four of these are of the region around the St Mary's Church in March/April 2020 (during Coronavirus shutdown!) with edits to July 2022, and were created to assist in a community habitat survey and conservancy project. Click on the Colour or Grayscale column to download or open.

Highlight Area	Colour PDF	Grayscale PDF
The walled churchyard with original graveyard	Colour	Grayscale
The church surrounding area, including the extension graveyard	Colour	Grayscale
The ancient causeway track leading from the village to the church	Colour	Grayscale
The churchyard and causeway	Colour	Grayscale

Churchyard Habitat Map

The following map shows a scheme from May/June 2021, updated as 06a of 26 September 2023, identifying habitat compartments around the church area for better nature conservancy. These involve mowing the grass at different times of year, to allow Spring flowers and Summer plants to thrive, supporting more diversity of plant and animal populations. Click on the Map or Legend column to download or open.

Scope	Map PDF	Map PNG	Legend PDF
St Mary's church area proposed habitat compartments	Colour map	Colour image	Legend and management document

Churchyard Explorer Maps

The following maps and associated activities documents suggest two different exploration trails around the churchyard area. Click on the Map or Activities column to download or open.

Scope	Map PDF	Activities PDF
St Mary's Churchyard Family Explorer	Colour map	Family activities
St Mary's Churchyard Plants? Explorer	Colour map	Plants? Trail

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