Dr Edward Christie Willatts OBE

Another unsung hero, linked with the work of Dudley Stamp and the Land Utilisation Survey but a great deal more besides.

Image from the 1930s. Could that be Edna Green too?

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/3983645366/in/photolist-752dYN

Edward Christie Willatts, geographer and cartographer, born July 4 1908; died January 8 2000

Christie Willatts, who has died aged 91, was recruited by the wartime government to run a geographic information system in the days before the term itself was invented. He was well qualified to do so. He had been the organising force behind Britain's first land utilisation survey. From 1941, until his retirement in 1973, he used his energy, unrivalled knowledge and skill as a presenter of geographical facts, to help planners and decision-makers across Whitehall do their job better.

Professor Dudley Stamp recruited him to run the survey he had conceived of land-use across Great Britain. Willatts recruited and enthused thousands of volunteers, writing their instructions, supplying their maps, and then checking the results. 

He did this by travelling the country by motorcycle and sidecar with fellow geographer Edna Green, whom he married in 1937. 

When the government requisitioned the survey offices at LSE, he commandeered a barrow to wheel all the maps and records to Bacon's, their printers in nearby Fetter Lane. When these were blitzed, Willatts set up a drawing office in his own home.

The Royal Geographical Society awarded him the Gill Memorial in 1950 for research, and he was appointed an OBE in 1958. He helped to found, and later became an honorary member, of the British Cartographic Society.

Source:

Obituary from 2000: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/mar/17/guardianobituaries4

He also helped J A Steers with his survey of the coastline of England and Wales.

His Obituary in 'Geography' was written by GA President Professor Michael Wise

Willatts had trained as a teacher 1930-31 and, at a time when good teaching posts were difficult to find, had received an attractive offer from Hulme Grammar School, Manchester. As he was already undertaking fieldwork for the LUS in Surrey, Willatts seized the new opportunity offered by Stamp for a year at an annual salary of £200. The decision brought great good fortune to the LUS. Willatts' work involved visiting education officers to win support, recruiting schools and student volunteers to undertake the field work, writing and publishing leaflets and instructions, supplying the six inches to the mile quarter sheets, collating and analysing the completed sheets, arranging the publication of the one-inch maps and, later, the production of the County Reports.

Source:

“Dr E.C ‘Christie’ Willatts, OBE 1908-2000: An Obituary.” Geography, vol. 85, no. 2, 2000, pp. 166–166. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40573410. Accessed 16 Sept. 2023.

E. C. Willatts (1946) "Some Geographical Factors in the Palestine Problem" The Geographical Journal,Vol. 108, No. 4/6 (Oct. - Dec., 1946), pp. 146-173 (32 pages)
J. R. James, Sheila F. Scott, E. C. Willatts (1961) "Land Use and the Changing Power Industry in England and Wales", The Geographical Journal, Vol. 127, No. 3 (Sep., 1961), pp. 286-309
E. C. Willatts (1971) "Planning and Geography in the Last Three Decades" The Geographical Journal, Sep., 1971, Vol. 137, No. 3 (Sep., 1971), pp. 311-330

Other references:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fresearchportal.port.ac.uk%2Ffiles%2F178033%2FSoddy_Report_Land_Use_Surveys.pdf&psig=AOvVaw0Rdpo2-DtdvBHYJlVZHFcw&ust=1694970764136000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CBAQjhxqFwoTCNCp46fSr4EDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAP

A piece in the BCS journal:

Christie Willatts inspired and helped to train almost an entire generation of cartographers at a time when there were no formal qualifications in the subject outside geography and surveying. Forced on him by the wartime situation he recruited many young women some straight from school and who count themselves fortunate to have had such a teacher. Having begun his postgraduate career by training as a teacher and having held parttime university teaching posts at LSE and Birkbeck College in London, his role became one of combining research with trainingwithin the Civil Service. His national contribution lay (with Dudley Stamp) in the completion of the aims of the LUS, then of laying the groundwork for a national atlas and lastly of raising the profile of geographical cartography in Britain, with decisionmakers and national institutions.