Year of Publication

1846

Description

This map shows the demarcation and development of Singapore town and land use of its adjoining districts. This is the most detailed map of Singapore’s town of the time that is known. This map includes Singapore Town, Downtown, Chinatown, Little India, Malay Village, Raffles Place, Orchard, Tiong Bahru, Keppel Road, Telok Ayer, Bras Basah, Kallang, Tanah Merah, Singapore Harbour.

Credits

This map was produced by John Turnbull Thomson, a Government Surveyor, Singapore and published by J.M. Richardson in London, scanned by Sakinah Yusof, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, and georeferenced by Leon Gaw Yan Feng.

Suggested Citation

John Turnbull Thomson 1846. Plan of Singapore Town and Adjoining Districts, Scale unclear. London: J. M. Richardson. In: “Historical Maps of Singapore, digitised by Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, made available by NUS Libraries.” https://libmaps.nus.edu.sg.

Rights and Restrictions

SLA is the copyright owners of the map. Please contact sla_enquiry@sla.gov.sg if you wish to use, adapt, or reuse selected map contents.

Georeferencing Notes

1. Georeferencing done with SVY21 projection.

2. Openstreet map (OSM) basemap was used for georeferencing road junctions while satellite imagery was used for geomorphological features.

3. 19/21 GCPs are of road junctions

   • Majority were located in present-day Chinatown, Raffles Place and Bugis, located at the centre of the map. These were the first areas to be settled by the British and hence have the most extensive road networks that still exist today.
   • To space out GCPs, junctions of arterial roads radiating to the other corners of Singapore were used and they are Kallang-Geylang-Tanah Merah Road, Serangoon Road, Bukit Timah Road and Pasir Panjang Road.

4. 2/21 GCPs are of geomorphological features

   • They are the southern tip of Labrador Park and the western tip of Sentosa Island, the only features that have not been altered or reclaimed to date.
   • In general, hills and coastlines were not used as they may be levelled or reclaimed, respectively, to accommodate development since 1846.

5. Transformation Method (21 GCPs)

   • First order polynomial (Affine Transformation) - RMSE: 0.000421671

     The 1846 road networks line up in all quadrants of the maps except in the north-western one (end of Bukit Timah Road) possibly due to distortion of the scanned image.

   • 2nd order polynomial - suggested - RMSE: 0.000289214

     This transformation solves the issue of the distortion by aligning the end of Bukit Timah Road to where it should be without wrapping the map too much. The other road networks still are in accurate positions and are not affected too much by the higher degree.

6. Issues

   • Being new, the British settlement of Singapore did not have many roads spread across the map for georeferencing.
   • The roads in the Kallang District in the north-east were more of plantation tracks that have given way to today’s Kallang industrial and HDB estate.
   • As mentioned before, the fold in the north-western tip of the map produces distortions when georeferencing.

7. Additional notes

   • RMSE results are much lower than Isaac’s and Richard’s work as they used the projected co-ordinate system (PCS) of WGS84 UTM 48N while this map used a geographic co-ordinate system (GCS) of SVY21.

Ground Control Points

Web Services

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