1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster Overview

This overview introduces 1:250 000 Scale Colour raster, giving context for all users – highlighting key features, providing examples of uses, and listing details such as file sizes, formats, etc.

The 1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster product is a small-scale, digital, raster mapping product that gives a regional view similar in content and appearance to a typical road atlas. It clearly shows the landscape features relevant to its scale, including cities, towns, many villages, motorways, A and B roads, railways, rivers, and some woodlands across Great Britain. You can use 1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster to overlay your own geographic or business data, or use it as a standalone map.

An extract of 1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster over Bristol and the Severn Estuary.

Product highlights

The 1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster product:

• Is an ideal regional overview or backdrop map.

• Has classic road atlas styling:

  • Motorways and main roads stand out, but you can also see country lanes clearly.

  • Places of interest, including camping and caravan sites, are clearly shown.

  • Road and junction numbers, junction-to-junction mileage, and primary routing are included.

• Is compatible with other open datasets available from data.gov.uk and many other sources.

Product applications

1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster combines cities, towns, motorways, A and B class roads, railways, rivers, and other key features. This makes it the ideal geographic context on which to overlay your own business data or to use in your applications.

1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster can be used for:

• Route planning

• Geographic context

• Webpage enhancement

A digital legend (key) that explains the cartographic symbols and styles is supplied with the product:

• English version of the 1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster legend

• Welsh version of the 1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster legend

Package inclusions

The compressed download file includes (among others):

• 56 edged-matched individual 100km by 100km tiles aligned to the National Grid.

• Product legend in TIFF and PDF format.

• 1:250 000 scale gazetteer

Ordnance Survey National Grid

Ordnance Survey divides Great Britain into squares of 100km by 100km. Each square has a unique two-letter reference, for example, TG in the grid below. 1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster tiles are identified by the National Grid reference of the south-west corner of the 100km² area they cover.

Map of Great Britain overlaid with the National Grid consisting of two-letter reference squares.

An introductory guide to the British National Grid (BNG) is available on the OS website.