Beyond the Castle HackLancaster- Lancaster Urban Archaeological Database

Web Mapping Services

The Web-Mapping Services (WMS) interface is supplied by a geoserver instance and can be reached at the following GetCapabilities URL:

http://lancasteruadgeo.oxfordarchaeology.com/geoserver/uad/wms?service=WMS&version=1.3.0&request=GetCapabilities

This outputs data in the following coordinate systems:

  • EPSG:27700 (British National Grid)
  • EPSG:4326 (Global Latitude/Longitude)
  • EPSG:900913 (Spherical Mercator)

The following modern base maps are available:

  • osopen: Ordnance Survey, based on Vector Map District
  • osopenbw: Ordnance Survey grayscale, based on Vector Map District
  • osopenraster: Ordnance Survey, based on Street View
  • osopenrasterbw: Ordnance Survey grayscale, based on Street View

The following historic base maps are available:

  • Docton1684: Kenneth Docton's map of Lancaster, 1684
  • Mackreth1778: Stephen Mackreth's "Plan of the town of Lancaster", 1778
  • Clarke1807: Christopher Clark's "A plan of the town of Lancaster", 1807
  • Baines1824: Edward Baines' "Plan of Lancaster", 1824
  • OS_1_25: Ordnance Survey 1st Edition 25 inch, 1893

There is also a small area of Geophysical survey available, which is very detailed line data but has no attributes, so may work better as WMS:

  • geophys

LIDAR data is available as both unprocessed (with buildings) and unprocessed (without buildings) and in 25cm and 2m resolution:

  • lidar_processed_25cm
  • lidar_processed_2m
  • lidar_unprocessed_25cm
  • lidar_unprocessed_2m

Reference on using WMS can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Map_Service

A sample GetMap request is as follows (use the GetCapabilities request to find out the available layers and output formats):

http://lancasteruadgeo.oxfordarchaeology.com/geoserver/uad/wms?service=WMS&version=1.1.0&request=GetMap&layers=uad:Clarke1807&styles=&bbox=347195.2852705703,460963.365584321,348158.27652011556,462471.0608549123&width=327&height=512&srs=EPSG:27700&format=image%2Fjpeg

NOTE: if you experience problems displaying the base maps, change the request to use WMS version 1.1.0 rather than 1.3.0