Country diary: old maps reveal folds in time

Stamford, Lincolnshire: You can time travel through maps, go back and back, and civilisation falls off the sheets like loosened scalesLooking at a map is travelling of a strange sort. A way of getting outside, without going outside. Of exploringhere you can visualise the roll and tumble of land, and its vertical space, on something entirely flat. Where the tiniest twitch of gaze can leap miles. And decades.On the National Library of Scotland's website you can time travel through maps. Go back, and back, and civilisation falls off these sheets like loosened scales. From a screen of pixels, shades of paper and shifts in typeface immediately evoke the smell and scratch of a mapmaker's tools, separated from you by nothing but a dozen decades or so. Continue reading...