UK Ordnance Survey maps are lovely, particularly the Landranger and Explorer series, but they are dear, and you haven’t been able to use them online for a while. As taxpayers we paid for it, but unlike the enlightened approach the US has to government collected data, which is generally in the public domain 1, the OS has had a Gollum-esque relation to letting the great British public use their map data, and didn’t let their precious out of expensive pricing plans.
The OS used to have a way for people to feature Landranger maps on websites which was called OS Openspace. I used this for mapping on a website about standing stones. OS Openspace is no more, it is now called OS OpenData.
Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire. Zoom in and you get Explorer 1:25000 detail.
You now get to zoom in and get Explorer-level detail, and the free data usage is easily enough for a hobby website or blog unless you get slashdotted. Nice. Well done OS. The documentation is pretty rough and ready, and note that at the time of writing if you simply implement their code example with a non-premium API you get a blank maps with just the OS logo in the bottom left corner, which can lead to much head-scratching and WTF?
The API dashboard shows you your usage
Initially I thought they had stiffed freebie cheapskates like me by demanding a Premium API, but no. You can do useful stuff without providing payment details 🙂 Well done Ordnance Survey!
- Unless it’s collected by the NSA or CIA I guess ;) ↩