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How to find the height of a location above sea level
Using an OS Explorer paper map
OS Explorer Maps show contour lines at five-metre intervals. You can estimate the height of a location by:
- locating the number set into a contour line near your location,
- tracing the contour line around with your finger until it's close to your location and
- counting uphill or down in multiples of five until you reach the band in which your location appears.
Using the OS getamap website
Worked example
What is the height of The Old Rectory in East Carlton, Leicestershire, above sea level?
(1) Launch our OS getamap application (note that the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in is required; we regret that this does not work on mobile devices).
(2) Once it has done so, you'll see a pop-up inviting you to log in or register. Feel free to do either, but you can also use basic functionality as a guest user. That's what we'll do here:
(3) In the top left-hand corner, enter East Carlton as your location search term:
(4) Click on the top result returned:
In this case, the pop-up box disappears showing the ZoomMap view of East Carlton.
(5) This doesn't include contour lines, so click on the Leisure button at the top of the screen:
(6) The screen will switch to a map of East Carlton at 1:25000 Scale. At the top of the map extract below (to the right of 'Shoulder of Mutton Plantation), you can see the 70 metre contour line and below it the 75 metre line:
Following the lines around the map, you can see that The Old Rectory sits between three and four lines below (or above, strictly speaking) the 75 metre line. Hence its height above sea level is between 90 and 95 metres – say 92.