This web site is dedicated to the glory of hunting down the paraphernalia littered about town and country that was used for map making, global positioning and sea level change monitoring.  This is a specialist hobby, not for the faint hearted, which involves scaling walls, trespass, gloom, disappointment and - the greatest scourge of all - pebble dash.

The Ordnance Survey used various pillars and brackets in the production of maps.  This equipment was built to last, and despite some of it being made redundant by satellite technology, much of it still remains in situ.  There's a wealth of detail that we could give, but you'd perhaps be rather dulled.  To whet your appetite, here is a whistle stop tour.

The Ordnance Survey used levelling techniques to survey the entire United Kingdom at various times during the 19th and 20th centuries.  This left a cornucopia of equipment dotted around the landscape.  Height above sea level is recorded with amazing accuracy at granite pillars with underground chambers called Fundamental Bench Marks (right), there are 198 of these across the UK.  They sit on bedrock, and are immune to slip and movement that would render a bench mark inscribed on a wall potentially inaccurate.  Funds are also associated with tidal monitoring stations, the most well known example being at Newlyn in Cornwall where "sea level" is defined.

Running between Funds are Main Lines, along which accurate levelling was undertaken.  At intervals of one mile on main lines, surveyors affixed Flush Brackets (left) to convenient walls, structures and parapets - often cementing over former bench marks.  FBs were also affixed every three miles on secondary lines of survey, and if you're dead lucky you'll find entirely random tertiary FBs scattered around the country (there one near me in Guisborough, North Yorkshire).  FBs all have unique serial numbers, and so are eminently "collectable".

Funds, Main Lines and FBs are all used to establish vertical height above sea level.  Map makers also need to know their location on the horizontal plane.  This was done by using Triangulation Pillars (right), concrete structures located in prominent locations across the country.  The theory was that if map makers knew the exact location (grid reference) of three visible TPs and they measured their distance to each visible TP, they could calculate through trigonometric rules their exact current location.  It's all done by satellites and global positioning systems now, but many of the sturdy concrete pillars still remain on hill tops across the country.  TPs are a particularly rewarding aspect of this hobby if you are an outdoor type, because they are, by definition, located in high places that afford cracking views of surrounding landscapes.  Entertainingly, TPs also feature a FB set into the concrete, thus adding to your list of FB serial numbers.

TPs are marked on OS Landranger (1:50,000) maps and so are relatively easy to track down.  FBMs are marked on detailed 1:1,250 scale maps, but are so few and far between that you need help to track them down with any kind of regularity.  FBs are not even distinguished on 1:1,250 maps, they are merely indicated as bench marks and could just as easily be a regular arrowed inscription of the kind that proliferates on every street corner in the UK.  FB hunting therefore requires experience and guile, and rewards logical thought, careful map reading and an element of luck.  Many FBs have been lost, either to demolition (often in the pursuit of wider and supposedly safer roads) or to alteration.  The worst crime of all is to pebble dash over a FB.  Experienced FB hunters talk of "good brick", denoting buildings of a certain age with original structural features that could well retain any FB affixed over the years.

FUNDAMENTAL BENCH MARKS

These are the basic building blocks of the mapping of the United Kingdom up until the 1980s.  They are still in use and maintained carefully by the Ordnance Survey.  A fundamental bench mark is a mark which records height above Newlyn Datum to extreme accuracy.  Funds are constructed directly on stable bedrock, and are therefore found at spots where bedrock lies near the surface.  An underground chamber contains the guts of the fund, but the only bit you will see is the smart granite pillar, the Ordnance Survey Bench Mark plaque, the mark itself on top of the pillar and sometimes a set of green painted railings.  Funds have now been fitted with July 1999 plaques by the OS which describe their function and importance.

There are 198 Funds in England, Wales and Scotland.  They are listed below in alphabetical order.