While in Longford, I asked passers-by to direct me from various points (wherever we happened to meet) to the home of Longford Slashers, a local football club. The club grounds are located on the south-western fringe of the town. From the town centre, one must follow the dominant north-south axis to the south, crossing the railway before following a sweeping bend which eventually leads to the grounds.
These budding cartographers were encountered at points in the town which were to the north of the grounds. All inverted the plan so that north lies to the bottom of the field. In a way, this convention works in a local setting. They were drawing from the bottom of the page and laying out the road as it developed ahead of someone heading for Slashers. This orientation was retained for the composite image above - Slashers GAA is in the top-right of the field, north is to the bottom.
The town's main street and Dublin Road featured strongly in the majority of the maps, indicating where the town's focus lay in a local sense, but also demonstrating how locals relate Longford to the bigger national picture.
A heavy reliance on vectors and text prevail. Few people delineated space or landmarks graphically, instead writing where and what things were, almost like a metro map with each station a tick on the line.
The various different cartographers have each been assigned a colour. They included an attendant in a petrol station (cyan), a young boy at the Sports Centre (pink), a member of an Garda SÃochana (blue) and a boy on his way to soccer training from the Battery Road area (yellow), who surprisingly managed to factor in traffic flows.
No comments:
Post a Comment