Contents

Introduction

This page shows various reports and maps relating to Basingstoke town plans from the 1950s to the 1960s.

It was first published by Andrew Watten, on 2020-11-07.

Overview

During the lockdown period, from March 2020, I was introduced to the Basingstoke History Facebook group. On this group were various posts, which spawned multiple comments. Within these comments sections, Alison Parker mentioned she had several old documents that were left by the previous owners of her house. She asked if anyone had the technology to scan these in and share them. I responded that I could assist and on 2020-07-20, Alison dropped a folder of documents to my house.

Unfortunately, I did not do much with this folder until November 2020 as we had a new baby over the summer, so we had other priorities. I did however investigate the best way to capture images of these documents. Some of the maps were bigger than A0 meaning there were limited options:

Roller scanner. As this moves the documents through rollers, this size of the document can be very large and greater than A0. However there is a chance the document can be damaged and as some of the documents were already showing signs of wear, it was possible this process could permanently damage them. As these documents were not mine and it would incur a cost, this method was ruled out.
Flatbed scanner. This was the preferred option but finding a large enough scanner was not easy. I eventually found a company that would do it, but one of the documents was larger that A0, so that could not be done via this method. Note that I did not specifically inquire if they did larger than A0, I just asked if they did A0. An advantage of this method is the documents would be flat and less likely to be damaged. Due to cost, this method was ruled out, but it may be the best option for the future.
Rostrum photography. I owned a small rostrum setup but this really was only useful for documents up to slightly larger than A3. I talked to some photographers and although they were interested, they confessed they had not done anything like this before. As I would have to pay for this, I decided I should just do it myself, so I went for this option.

I mounted a camera pointing straight down, and put the documents on some flat board. Unfortunately, no matter what I tried I could not get the documents as flat as a scanner would make them. I tried weights on the edges and putting glass over the whole thing. The glass kept producing glare and I did not have a big enough sheet to work with anyway. In the end I just has to accept that some of the documents were just not going to be flat. I am an amateur photographer, at best, so I suspect I didn't use the correct settings and methods. However I was limited by time, money and what resources I could get in a lockdown. I am not especially pleased with the results, but for anyone looking at the documents, there should be enough clarity and resolution to interpret the documents. The results may not be museum quality, but they should suffice and fulfill the main goal of sharing them freely.

Documents

The documents, contained in the folder, were in no real order. I suspected that some were linked together, but I did not want to start assuming things. Some reports have a map included and some have a space for a map, that is missing. The table below shows all the documents that were photographed. Reports are saved as a PDF file, which may or may not include a map. All maps are viewable as JPG images.

Date	Title	PDF	Map Image	Notes
1910	Hampshire. Sheet XVIII. 8. S.W.	-		Click this link for a cleaner version of this map.
1955	Hampshire County Council Development Plan 1955 Basingstoke Town Map with Programme Map Superimposed			-
1962	Hampshire County Council Development First Review Basingstoke Town Map Amendment Map And Comprehensive Development Area Map		-	This report had space for a map, but it was not present.
1962	Hampshire Development Plan Basingstoke Town Map Comprehensive Development Area Map	-		This map probably belongs to the report on the previous line.
1962	Hampshire Development Plan Basingstoke Town Map Designation Map No 1	-		-
1962	Hampshire Development Plan Basingstoke Town Map Amendment Map	-		-
1962 (August)	Basingstoke Town Development Provisional Master Plan			-
1966 (January)	Basingstoke Town Development Master Plan	-		-
?	The Nationall Chamber of Trade Information Booklet. Redevelopment Problems.		-	Unknown publishing date.

Note: Proper document version control and accurate dating did not seem to be the norm in the 1950s & 1960s.

Contact

Please email history@watten.net for any queries about this page.