About us

John and Annie Henry began 19th Century geological maps in 1994. John is a semi-retired consulting geologist working mainly in construction through his business APIC - Air Photo Interpretation Consultancy. He is a graduate of the University of Waterloo, Canada and of ITC, Enschede, Netherlands. From 1973 to 2003, he worked in Arup Geotechnics. There, he established the air photo section and was responsible for engineering desk studies. In this role he established a large corporate map and air photo collection, and carried out fieldwork for highway, railway and pipeline projects in the UK and Ireland and overseas in the Mediterranean, sub-Saharan Africa, Saudi Arabia, east Asia and Australia.

It was the UK work that involved John in the use of historic air photos (back to the 1920s) and historic topographic mapping at large scales (back to the 1860s) for detecting past industrial land uses and introduced him to early geological mapping. For much of his career the large scale maps (six inch to the mile) of UK and Ireland were unpublished which meant that geologists used hand-coloured manuscript maps (now superseded), held in London (now Keyworth), Edinburgh and Dublin.

We live in central London on the edge of Notting Hill, close to the Ladbroke Grove Underground Station and the vibrant street market on Portobello Road. Visitors are welcome to our home to view maps and books by prior appointment - please enquire