Kenneth Guy Messenger

1920-1993. Guy Messenger lived at Uppingham in Rutland, teaching biology at Uppingham School until his retirement in 1980. He remained an active botanist until his death, publishing a monograph on the flora of Rutland in 1971 and several contributions to Watsonia, the scientific journal of the Botanical Society of the British Isles. He was an early member of the Charles Close Society (CCS), joining in 1981, and quickly turned the analytical and classification skills he had acquired as a botanist to his new passion of cartobibliography. He was the author of the first full length monograph on a twentieth century map series, the Ordnance Survey one-inch map of England and Wales Third Edition (Large Sheet Series), which the CCS published in 1988. This archive contains the research papers for this project, also proof copies and post-publication addenda, as well as of other shorter works published by the CCS in Sheetlines, and as independent booklets. There is a substantial body of material for a second full length monograph, on Ordnance Survey half-inch maps, which was left incomplete at his death. There are active but unpublished listings of several other Ordnance Survey map series, and much material relating to map cover classification. There are correspondence files, in particular both sides of his correspondence (1982-1993) with Richard Oliver, wherein many themes in the largely unexplored territory of Ordnance Survey research, much of which would evolve into the published work of both men, were developed. Further details of his life and work appear in the obituary in Sheetlines 38.