Signs of the times

By the Editorial Team · Wednesday, September 30, 2026

In the early 1970s, British surveyors manually carved elevation benchmarks into buildings around Bury St Edmunds to record precise height data above sea level. This traditional method highlights the dramatic shift to modern GPS and digital mapping technologies, which now allow for faster and more accurate spatial measurements.

In the early 1970s, British ordnance surveyors undertook detailed tertiary levelling work in areas including Bury St Edmunds, marking buildings with physical benchmarks to record precise elevations above mean sea level. Neil Hoskin, a former surveyor who participated in this work, recalls the process of carving these marks by hand into homeowners' brickwork using a zinc template. Initially met with skepticism from residents, the team would demonstrate the significance of the benchmarks, explaining that each marked home displayed an exact, unique elevation point.

Hoskin notes that this manual method contrasts sharply with modern techniques, where global positioning systems (GPS) and digital mapping tools can determine such measurements instantaneously and with greater precision. Reflecting on his career, he retains the original zinc template as a symbol of technological progress in surveying methods, highlighting the evolution from painstaking physical marking to rapid digital measurement. This shift underscores broader advances in geographic information systems and spatial data collection since the era of traditional surveying.

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