Coast line
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The county of Hampshire is bounded on the south by the sea.
This boundary does not change much with changes of local or
national politics! but it is subject to change by nature. Rivers,
the sea, and winds change the shape of the land; sometimes
slowly, sometimes suddenly and dramatically.
If the coast shown by Morden's map is studied closely and compared
with earlier and later mapping you can see differences; some are
easy to spot. But, bear in mind the questions how accurate was
the cartographer of each map, just what line was being plotted as
the coast, how good was the surveying? Don't jump to conclusions
too rapidly.
If the mapped coastlines are to be compared it might be helpful to
lay them over each other. You might make each coastline conform
to a common grid calculated for each map from data points over the
whole county (this is the process used for other comparisons in
this project). Or, you might calculate a common underlying
structure just from recognizable fixed points along the coast:
castles don't move, towns centres might shift a little, ... Do
allow for gross as well as slight errors in the map maker's
plotting.
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