About this project

A mapped catalogue of British history

Map Britannia is a growing record of the people, places and events that shaped Britain — plotted exactly where they happened, so the past has a location, not just a date.

What this is

Most history is written as a list. Map Britannia treats it as a place instead. Every entry is anchored to real coordinates, so you can search a town, village or postcode and see what happened on that exact ground — a shipwreck offshore, an ancient tree that's stood for centuries, the writer who once lived down the road.

It's an independent project, built and researched by one person, with a simple working principle: better to cover a subject properly than to cover everything thinly. Each theme is added only once it has real, verified content behind it.

What's on the map so far

The catalogue currently covers four themes, with more planned as research is completed:

  • Horrible History
  • Shipwrecks
  • Ancient Trees
  • Writers & Legends

Sources & data

Every location and figure on the map is checked against a primary or authoritative source before it's published — no invented statistics, no unverified claims. Current data draws on:

  • Historic England — National Heritage List for England OGL v3
  • OpenStreetMap contributors — base mapping and place data ODbL
  • Wikidata — structured reference data CC0
  • EnviDat — environmental and landscape datasets ODbL
  • Lloyd's Register Foundation Heritage Portal & Wrecksite.eu — maritime and shipwreck research