The University of Bristol holds an extensive archive of topographical and geological maps including about 18 metal and 10 wooden plan chest and chest of drawers.
The maps used to be integral part of the teaching in both, the School of Earth Sciences and Geographical Sciences and the archive has been collated over the past 100 years. The maps were initially stored in the School’s teaching spaces, later moved to the so called ‘drama store’ in the Wills Memorial Building and moved off site to Langford Campus in 2015. Onsite storage had the advantage of easy access for students and researcher and the public but due to the lack of appropriate working space any cataloguing efforts had to be postponed until the collection could be moved elsewhere. The move to Langford was meant to give both Schools time to catalogue and rationalise the archive but due to quickly deteriorating conditions in the mothballed building this has only happened on a smaller scale and mainly focused on the Earth Sciences Maps.
There is also a collection of 86 maps which used to be wall mounted. They are currently rolled up and most of the ES relevant ones are stored in the Wills Memorial Building.
Earth Sciences
Reference: All those maps originally stored in Earth Sciences and often market with the School of Earth Sciences or Department of Geology stamp)
The archive mainly contains geological maps from abroad but does contains some geological and OS maps from the UK, most of them old multiple copies. The maps are stored in 10 wooden cabinets and organised by country (international maps) or by county (national maps). Based on a recent survey and past inventory the total estimate of maps is around 5000.