Thiepval Ridge

[Richard Ayling]

Hi all. As my research deepens or perhaps I should say widens, I wonder if I can float this past you all. I have quite a few maps of the trench systems around the battle for Thiepval ridge in late Sept 1916. However they seem in the main to detail trenches beyond the British front. I am looking for details of the road and tramways and British trench systems if they exist. I am particularly interested in the locations of Pioneer Road, Blighty Valley, billeting road and Quarry post which I believe were around Authuille and Thiepval areas.

My next request is to ask if anyone knows if a body density map exists for the recovery of remains found during the battleground clearing for that area. Your help will be much appreciated.

 

[Don Regiano]

Pioneer Road in squares W.10. c. d

Blighty Valley in squares X. 1. b and R. 32. c (top right)

Quarry Post X. 1. c. 5. 2

 

[Michelle Young]

@Howard might be able to help you with that one. 

[Don Regiano]

Should have said to ignore the red flags.  They relate to some research I was doing about Lonsdale cemetery.

[WhiteStarLine]

13 hours ago, Richard Ayling said:

road and tramways and British trench systems if they exist. I am particularly interested in the locations of Pioneer Road, Blighty Valley, billeting road and Quarry post

Hi Richard,

All of these can be found on TrenchMapper, which lets you select different maps from different dates.  Click to enlarge - I found all the places of interest to you but some are NE of this extract.  TrenchMapper has over 100 scanned maps at the 1:10,000 and 1:20,000 level and one aerial showing railways and trenches.  This is part of 6,500 trench maps originally scanned by @Howard some 15 years ago and now georeferenced.

Cheers, Bill 

[WhiteStarLine]

14 hours ago, Richard Ayling said:

ask if anyone knows if a body density map exists for the recovery of remains found during the battleground clearing for that area

Richard,

If you open TrenchMapper and click Help, then About the Project, then Body Density Maps, you will find a very easy-to-read scholarly article about these and why they are not really body density maps.  This was written by @Howard very recently.  The map collection is all on TrenchMapper as are the White Cross Atlas series.

Western Front Association members get full zoom and can download the entire map free.  PM me for a good sized extract of the area you want.  It shows places like Blighty Valley and Quarry Post.  Years ago I did a heatmap for the entire Western Front but we have better data now so it's a bit outdated.  We'll be adding this to TrenchMapper in the next 4 - 6 weeks.

 

[Howard]

21 hours ago, Richard Ayling said:

Hi all. As my research deepens or perhaps I should say widens, I wonder if I can float this past you all. I have quite a few maps of the trench systems around the battle for Thiepval ridge in late Sept 1916. However they seem in the main to detail trenches beyond the British front. I am looking for details of the road and tramways and British trench systems if they exist. I am particularly interested in the locations of Pioneer Road, Blighty Valley, billeting road and Quarry post which I believe were around Authuille and Thiepval areas.

My next request is to ask if anyone knows if a body density map exists for the recovery of remains found during the battleground clearing for that area. Your help will be much appreciated.

 

Richard

As @WhiteStarLine has pointed out, TrenchMapper has what you want. All 122 Body Density maps are on & fully georeferenced as is a help page that describes what these maps meant and what they don't.

One of the BD maps that covers the Aveluy area is m_5_000767. In TrenchMapper, right click and choose Map ID Jump and use m_5_000767 as the ID. If you look at the Body Density Maps help page as above, at the bottom of that page are the map IDs. Take care in what interpretation you make of the numbers shown.

For roads and tramways etc. look at the smaller scale maps, 1:40:000 and smaller, the large scale maps like 1:10,000 are better for trenches. Early trench maps only showed British trenches on Secret editions, later they appeared on most. Sept 1916 in the transition period (I think!) so continue to look at the roughly 300 maps we have. That number includes aerial photos and non-British maps.

You will encounter the date problem. Many maps have either no date marked or just the base cartography. There is little that can be done about that apart from correlating marked positions with war diaries- a painstaking task. Those maps with no date at all appear at the bottom of the TrenchMapper map list. Oh for a magic date wand!

To find trench names etc. use Advanced Search. That uses a large list, best used by typing as little as possible. This list is set to increase in size and scope over the next few months.

I hope that helps

Howard

 

[Richard Ayling]

Hi @WhiteStarLine and @Howard

Thank you both so much for your input. I shall run off and become a member of the the WFA. what a fantastic project the trench mapper seems to be. I had read that the body density maps need to be read with some caution as they do not perhaps give a true reflection of where men fell, times or dates or indeed cannot be accurately verified. I think I just wanted to take a look out of interest. The whole thing must have been grim enough. Out of interest has the CWGC passed any interesting comment on them as I believe they were found in a book  shop and didn't originate from official archives? Is there not perhaps a more official version of body recoveries during post war clear ups?

Many thanks again

Rich