| Administrative History | The Roy Military Survey of Scotland, known to its contemporaries as the 'Great Map', is a uniquely important historical cartographic document. It provides a uniform graphic snapshot of the entire Scottish mainland at a time when the landscape was beginning an era of rapid change.
For many Highland areas, it is the most detailed and informative map that survives for the entire 18th century, and for all areas, the only standard topographic map prior to the Ordnance Survey mapping in the 19th century.
Born at Miltonhead, near Carluke, William Roy (1726-1790) was the son of an estate factor and attended the grammar school at Lanark. Little is known of how he acquired his mapping expertise, though some historians have speculated that he worked for the Post Office in Edinburgh as a surveyor of roads, as well as for the Board of Ordnance as a draughtsman. The Board of Ordnance was critically short of engineers in the late 1740s - only four were available in Scotland in 1748 - and Roy probably undertook the initial work on the Survey around Fort Augustus and further afield single-handedly.
From 1748 Roy was assisted by six surveying parties, with six men within each survey party; the Highlands were largely complete by 1752, while southern Scotland (south of the Forth-Clyde line) was completed by 1755.
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