Data Access

This is where you can download parts of the data behind A Vision of Britain through Time, for use in your own projects. For legal reasons, and to avoid overloading our computer, downloading is limited to users in UK universities, colleges and schools. We do not maintain our own list of registered users, so your institution needs to belong to the UK Federation. If you are not in the Federation, we are very happy to discuss data licensing. Contact us at gbhgis@port.ac.uk.

We currently offer three types of content for download:

  • Historical maps: Clicking the "Download Maps" button will take you to our map library in download mode.

  • Digital boundaries: You can download Shapefiles from the Boundaries tab here. Some of the boundaries are under a Creative Commons licence and can be downloaded by anyone.

  • Historical statistics: Use the Statistics tab here to specify a location, a historical period and a theme, and you can then select just the relevant data values from our large library. The output will be a file that loads easily into a spreadsheet program like Excel, or your own choice of database or statistics software.

The Documentation tab offers access to data about our data including definitions of how our collection of statistics is stored and to the documentation system for the older, more traditional, but larger GB Historical Database.

All downloads are supplied as compressed archive files which also include guidelines on citation and acknowledgment, and detailed copyright terms. Please respect these.

Please click on the name of the boundaries you wish to download.

COUNTIES — Free Access


DISTRICTS — Restricted Access

Scotland: Scottish Burghs
Scotland: Scottish Districts of County

CONSTITUENCIES — Restricted Access

Search for statistics to download

Zoom and centre the map on your location of interest, then click 'Search' to find available statistics.

We are sorry, but we do not have statistics for this location and chosen date range. Please choose a different location or date range, and try searching again.


Statistics available to download for this location

part of the 1841 occupational table

The Vision of Britain system holds a large library of historical statistics. We store all the data values in one big list, and for each value we record:

We record WHAT each number measures via our implementation of the Aggregate/Tabular Data Extension developed by the Data Documentation Initiative. This places each data value within an nCube whose dimensions are defined by variables (sometimes organised into variable groups), like occupation and gender and age, each of which is a set of categories, such as "Males" and "Females":


Themes are used in the Vision of Britain system to organise all our statistical data into a small number of broad categories, often identified by icons on the web site. The following Themes are currently defined:



Enter a search term below to find relevant nCubes from our statistical database:


GB Historical Database

Most of the material in Vision of Britain has been imported from an older, larger and more traditional system called the Great Britain Historical Database. The more traditional structure means we cannot provide users with direct access to the contents of GBHDB, only this documentation system. Direct access to the contents of GBHDB is available for download via the UK Data Archive.