Courtesy of Deddington Map Group
Three years later the job was completed. There were landmarks along the way: four leaflets on varying aspects of life in Deddington were distributed to residents and a book Discovering Deddington, was published. Funding for the whole project was generously provided by Deddington Parish Council,Rural Action (through Oxfordshire Rural Community Council), and Cherwell District Council.
The map is the core of this sizable undertaking. Measuring 2 metres high by 3 metres wide (6ft x 9ft),it takes the form of a double triptych (6 panels) and hangs on public display under the Town hall building in the Market Square and in the Windmill Centre. The panels comprise: history and map of Hempton; map of Deddington; history and map of Clifton; history of Deddington; farms and fields of the parish; and a map depicting the ages of buildings.
The Cartographer's Tale
At first, we hoped that an aerial perspective could be used to show the villages as they would be seen from a hot-air balloon. But this would have given too much emphasis to the nearest parts and a reduction in scale and detail of more distant areas. In addition it would have been necessary to delete many of the trees so that the buildings could be seen more clearly.
Once this approach was seen to be impractical, it was decided to produce a plan view of the three villages to the largest practical scale, showing gardens, trees, hedges and pools, etc. The Ordnance Survey maps available were somewhat out of date, and would not show the required detail. Several people volunteered to take aerial photographs, and while these were of great help in clarifying some detail, they did not provide the vertical views needed. To overcome this, Airmed of Oxford Airport was commissioned to carry out an accurate aerial survey, and this was done in early 1999. The aircraft used was a twin-engined Piper Seneca fitted with a vertically mounted Pentax 645 medium-format camera loaded with Fuji 400 ASA negative film and set at f/5.6 and 1,000th. sec. in order to produce images at a scale of 1:1250. The aircraft was flown at 1,500ft, Deddington being covered by 26 exposures. Hempton and Clifton were photographed in the same way, and single verticals were taken from a higher altitude, covering each village on a single shot.
Cartographer Peter Terry takes up the tale: 'The serious task of entering the data from these photographs into the computer was begun. Each photo was placed on a digitising tablet and the outlines of the buildings, hedges and roads were plotted into a Computer Aided Design (CAD) programme where the edges were matched to produce a highly detailed single drawing of each of the elements of the project. The final scale used for the village maps was 1:1750, which allowed Deddington to fit on to an AO size board, with Hempton and Clifton fitting onto A1 size boards.
'With the outline drawings as a CAD file, I could now scale the images to suit the final artwork. For example, the parish (farms and fields) map needed considerable reduction. Because my work space was small, the maximum image size that I could work on was A3. The outline drawings were then plotted on to handmade acid-free archive quality paper using a Roland pen plotter, the pens being filled with archive quality inks. The photo-quality effect on the final panels was achieved by hand painting using acrylic paints and inks which have a high degree of light fastness, as well as being waterproof. I had to use some degree of artistic licence as far as colours were concerned, as many of the green shades were very similar, and I wanted the buildings and the large number of mature trees to stand out. As an example of the detail required, each tree involved about five stages: drawing the approximate shape by hand with reference to the photograph; laying on three, or may be four, green glazes to represent the foliage; and the final outlining and detailing with a very fine pen. Similar work was needed for the buildings and the hedges. An airbrush was used on some of the larger fields to obtain the desired tones.
When the painting was completed, the various panels were made into what can best be described as a large jigsaw. There were probably eleven individual pieces in the Deddington map alone, excluding the buildings and farming illustrations. I then assembled the jigsaw by pasting it on to museum quality board with archive PVA adhesive.
From the first meeting of the Map Group to the point of completion when the maps were ready to be photographed took three years almost to the day. My cartographic element of the team project, after the initial research and final decision on the size and format, took two years of full-time work of up to six hours a day. Luckily, being retired, I was able to devote this amount of time. I hope that the result will turn out to be informative to coming generations on how our Parish was laid out at the close of the second millennium.'
The Illustrators' Tale
The watercolours above the Deddington map and around the parish map were done by 87-year old Ken Langstaff, a former war artist, who left the village before the map was completed. All other illustrations were done by a team of residents: John Cheney, Bill Dickinson, Jo Mace and Norman Stone, led by Maureen Dew. Line drawings were coloured in and images scanned.
The Writers' Tale
Local history academic Chris Day teamed up with Norman Stone to write the text of the panels on the history of Deddington, Clifton and Hempton, and the panel on the ages of buildings. Betty Hill updated Kirsty Rodwell's 1975 map showing the ages of building prior to World War I. Buffy Heywood and Maureen Forsyth spent many hours researching field names with local farmers.
The Techies' Tale
Ken Langstaff's illustrations were scanned and enhanced by Colin Robinson using an Apple Mac G3 computer, Agfa Arcus II scanner and Adobe PhotoShop 5. Alan Dew did the imaging on the new illustrations. Archival printing was done on an Epson 2000P inkjet printer using Hahnemühler papers. Typesetting was done by Mary Robinson on an Apple Mac G3 computer in Adobe PageMaker 6.5. Typeface is Bookman Old Style.
The completed panels were photographed by Banbury Colour Imaging to produce 10x8 transparencies, which were then scanned. Borders were added electronically. From these images, full-size inkjet facsimiles were produced, mounted on to backing board and framed by James Guthrie and Neil Cross in Clifton. The A2 map of Deddington was printed in full colour from the scanned image by Information Press, Oxford. Copies are available, from Buffy Heywood, 01869 338212, who can also supply, to order, A3 copies of the maps of Clifton, Hempton,and Fields and Farms of Deddington Parish.
The first facsimile edition of the double triptych map was presented to Deddington Parish Council on 10 November 2000.
Members of the Group, past and present: Norman Stone (Chairman), Mary Robinson (Secretary), Maureen Forsyth (Treasurer), Christine Blenntoft, Chris Day, Maureen Dew, Buffy Heywood, Betty Hill, Ken Langstaff, Walter Meagher, Colin Robinson, Peter Terry, Kristin Thompson, Elizabeth Tothill and Jackie Williamson.
Deddington Map Group is a voluntary, non-profit making organisation.
Copyright © Deddington Map Group 2000