What was the exact location of the Thiepval Chateau ? On the spot where now the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme can be found ? Or at the great farm across the Thiepval Church ?

It was near to the site of the farm opposite the church. The large formal gardens of the chateau ran all the way down to the wood.

Some have said that the farm house is built on the foundations of the chateau, but others have said not. If not, it is probably quite close by.

Ken

Thank you Ken. I also thought so, but some friends of mine thought it used to stand on the location where the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme is standing now.

Click to view attachment

Hans

This contemporary map shows the location of the Schloss. The crossroads at 2 o'clock to the chateau, through which Schwabengraben ran is the present day Thiepval cross roads. From this and consideration of where the modern farm is, you can see: a. the Memorial to the Missing is about 300 m south of the Chateau site and b. the farm lies between the site of the chateau and the crossroads.

Jack

Great Jack, thank you very much !

The chateau buildings and drive marked in red.

Mick

Spot on Mick.
The village was a lot bigger in 1914 with houses along the road towards the communal cemetery. The line of the road was not in the same place as it is today as can be seen in the map Jack posted. There is a nice postcard picture of the chateau on google earth.
Regards
John

Another way of looking at it:

Ken,

As my American friends would say: Hey, that's very neat!

How d'ya do that then?

Bill

Thanks Bill, but I'm sure I stole the idea from you!

The next phase would be to add another layer, trace off the map's main features and then delete the map, leaving just the features overlayed on the aerial photo.

Ken

Thank you all very much. Dear Jack, Ken and Mick, may I place your maps/images also on my own dutch history-forum ?

Fine by me

Jack

Not me guv. I did the trench map overlays on to Bleu Series maps not photos. I am most dreadfully jealous!

Fine by me, too.

If you need any others, let me know.

Jack, do you have a date for the German map?

Ken

Well, your images were the inspiration, at least.

I start with an aerial photo, from www.geoportail.fr. I use the screen grab facility (PrtSc key) and stitch a number of aerial images together to cover the area I want. Then create a new layer and add the map to that, reducing the opacity by degrees until it looks right. In this case the opacity was reduced to 30%.

I've done some very large areas using this method, but the resultant file sizes can make the computer groan.

Ken

Sounds great. I will go away and play with my new French trench maps. This is exactly what I bought a computer with a terabyte of disk space for!!!!

Yippee.

Have you thought of buying linesman to go with the new computer? Or doesn't Linesman cover the French sector?

You can do the same thing using Google Earth & bringing the maps in as overlays. Alan & I did a fair bit of this before his Gallipoli trip when he was looking for the 1/5th Norfolks at Suvla.

Brian

Good question. Anyone from Linesman about or are they like London buses?

Bill

There are quite a few Linesman users on the Forum (me for one) - but the expert is Guy Smith ("Smithmaps" on the Forum) who developed Linesman. The areas covered are on their website here - with Gallipoli out soon (Guy???).

Regards
Brian

OK, covers some of the area I am interested in but not for the right year! A bit on the expensive side for my purposes I guess.

Yes no problem

Mick

The problem I have with the overlays, using them for public display rather than my own use is I worry about the copyright - for example the one above has the GEO name running across it.

Ken

The map is from late June 1916. It was intended primarily to show the location of heavy Albrecht mortars (circles with dots) and grenade launchers (black dots).

Jack

Thanks Jack. I had always assumed that the British front line at that time was closer to the wood rather than on the slope leading up to the village.

You live and learn.

Ken