William Roy

The Jacobite Uprisings in the Highlands made the government realise that roads were needed to link strategic army camps such as Fort George and Fort William. However, the road builders such as General Wade and Major Caulfield laboured without detailed and accurate maps.

A year after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Lieutenant-Colonel David Watson was charged by the Duke of Cumberland to undertake ‘The Military Survey of Scotland’. The maps produced are still called ‘Roy’s Maps’, after Watson’s assistant, William Roy.

William Roy was born in Carluke, Lanarkshire in 1726. Not much is known about his early life but it seems it was always his dream to map the whole of Great Britain. He developed extraordinary cartographic skills whilst apprenticed as a civilian draughtsman to the Board of Ordnance employed in surveying new roads for the Royal Mail. He then joined Watson’s Military Survey team based at Fort Augustus, but his position as Practitioner Engineer carried no particular military status.

The Board of Ordnance had been lobbying the Duke of Cumberland, as Head of the Army, to rectify this matter so it was not until 1755 that Roy was elevated to Ensign rank and commissioned into the 53rd Regiment of Foot.