It’s surprisingly difficult to find any online map service which accepts Ordnance Survey grid references, even the OS-based footpathmaps.com which one of the quickest-loading map services in the UK. Surely the UK government should require that the OS licence a grid reference option ASAP, to all the major map services? A little drop down box, input your OS GR number… and off you go. How difficult can it be?

Thankfully that’s exactly what the National Grid Reference Redirect has made. It’s blissfully simple and works. Sadly it doesn’t speed up the incredibly slow-loading and generally spam-filled online map services, but it works with Google Maps and Bing Maps and more.

You just have to make sure you use the format SJ882359. That means if you have a more precise four-number grid reference like SJ882?359? then you’ll need to lop off the last ‘?’ number in each block of four.

In future it would be great to see it work with the excellent footpathmaps.com. The other great UK mapping service maps.nls.uk can already handle OS grid reference input, although only for historic maps, and it’s often as slow as all the others (bar footpathmaps.com).

Update: footpathmaps.com no longer offers OS maps.