NRS-18887 | Surveyors' field books - Departmental surveyors [Surveyor General]

Full description

This series consists of field books which were created by surveyors employed by the Surveyor-General.

Crown plans have been produced since 1788 to define roads, leases, licences and grants affecting Crown land or land in the process of being alienated from the Crown to ensure its orderly management and administration in New South Wales.

In 1925 surveyors employed by the Department of Lands were given their own series of field books. These books were issued under the control of each district surveyor. (1)

Field books were created to facilitate the taking of notes by surveyors on site to gather sufficient information to allow for the drawing up of Crown plans. The field books represent the primary record of survey and contain the following information:
Instruction number;
Class and purpose of survey;
Portion or allotment and section number; parish and county; municipality or shire; city, town or village;
A diagram to illustrate the survey sufficiently to facilitate the preparation of a complete and accurate plan without recourse to any other records and without verbal explanation;
Particulars such as physical character, geological formation, types of soil, variety and density of timber, grazing and agricultural capabilities and water supply;
The position of improvements; particulars of ownership; description and value; names of estates, houses, roads, streets, lanes, rivers, creeks, lakes;
The datum line of the survey and the azimuth adopted; bearings in degrees, minutes and seconds of arc, including repetition of angles and closing angles;
Lengths as measured, corrections for slope and temperature and lengths deduced;
References from reference trees or other reference marks;
On measured lines the intersections of watercourses, other natural features, fences, etc;
The position and state of preservation of old marks;
Lines rechained;
Offset distances and widths of frontage watercourses;
Details of astronomical observations set out in detail in field notes and a schedule of reduced observations.

The field books are arranged in numerical order, with an alphanumeric prefix and the name of the surveyor on the front cover.

From 1925 the books were prefixed with either an X or a Y and a number. From 1933, this was replaced by an LD prefix and a number. (2)

The field books were known as the LD Series until 1975 when they became known as the New Series.

From 1975 to 1977, the prefix became LD with the year and a number. From 1978 onwards, the prefix became LD with the year, a number and Lands Office title abbreviation.

This series replaced NRS 13889, Surveyors' field books [Surveyor General]. These records were created by surveyors who were either employed by the Surveyor-General and Department of Lands or in private practice.

For a glossary of survey mark type and status see the Land and Property Information website http://www.lpi.nsw.gov.au/surveying/scims_online/glossary. 

Endnotes
1. Land & Property Information, Fact sheet, The evolution of survey books ‘monuments over measurements’, April 2003,
http://www.lpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/182688/Evolution_of_survey_field_books.pdf
(accessed 04 November, 2015).
2. Loc. cit.