Isle of Wight Map – Hidden Names

I recently read the book Map Addict by Mike Parker.

One of the things he mentions in the book is that on the Ordnance Survey Landranger map of The Solent & Isle of Wight (number 196), somebody has hidden a number of people’s names in amongst the random craggy lines which make up the cliffs along the southern coast of the Isle of Wight.

Being the kind of person who likes this sort of nonsense, I decided to check it out.

A couple of people online have mentioned these hidden names – apparently they were also featured in a BBC TV show called Map Men in 2004-5 – but nobody appears to have created images or a list of all the names. So I’ve gone ahead and done it.

You’re welcome.

Click the image to see the location on Streetmap.

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These images are screenshots from the Streetmap website, which I’ve scaled up by 200% using a pixel-art scaling algorithm. The results aren’t brilliant, so I thought about scanning an actual copy of the paper map instead.

However, when I looked at my copy of the map, I found that most of the names are not there! Only Bill and Trev are present.

Now, my physical copy of the map is copyright 2006 (Edition D2). Does that mean that Streetmap are using a version of the map (the one with all the names) which is over 11 years out of date?

I assume that Streetmap are using a newer version of the map. In fact, I’ve just had a look at the online map on the Ordnance Survey website, which I would assume is the most up-to-date version, and it has all the names on! So all the extra names must have been added to the map since 2006!

Very strange.

Perhaps this means there might be other odd stuff hidden in the OS maps? 🙂