Simple How To View Free LIDAR Mapping of England and Wales

UPDATE October 2026: the simplest way now

LiDAR Lens England & Wales is a free map in the browser, with no login, that works on a phone. It shows the 1 m LiDAR ground model for all of England and Wales, with the trees, crops and buildings taken away so the shape of the ground shows: banks, ditches, barrows, field systems, hollow ways.

1. Type a place name, postcode or grid reference into Go to, or use the location button.
2. Zoom in to field scale (zoom 13 or closer) and drag the round lens over the aerial photo. The bare ground shows inside it.
3. Turn the sun with the dial. A feature that is invisible in one light often stands out in another. The other views (multi-direction hillshade, slope, local relief, sky-view) bring out different things.
4. Switch on What's here? and click a spot to measure the bump or hollow there and list the recorded monuments nearby: Historic England in England, Cadw and Coflein in Wales.

It fetches the LiDAR as you look, from the Environment Agency (England) and the Welsh Government (Wales), so new ground takes a few seconds to appear and is instant on return. Two county versions hold their LiDAR locally and are faster, with old Ordnance Survey maps (and, in Wiltshire, rights of way): Wiltshire and the Ure henges in North Yorkshire. More about them in LiDAR Lens for Wiltshire, and how to get one for your own area in Make your own LiDAR Lens.

Other free viewers

• England: the Environment Agency's own LIDAR Composite Viewer. Study the guide (bottom left) and the layers (in the bottom bar). houseprices.io still gives a simple England and Wales view.
• Wales: DataMapWales: search for LiDAR in the layers. The old Lle portal has closed and its LiDAR moved to DataMapWales. Mapping the Past runs a community portal to the Welsh LiDAR. For the Welsh heritage records and historic maps that go with it, see the new Historic Wales portal (in beta until 1 December 2026; a first look).
• Scotland: the Scottish Remote Sensing Portal.

Downloading the data

• England: the Environment Agency's Survey Data Download. Historic England's draft guidance Accessing Environment Agency lidar tiles from the web (updated August 2024) explains the datasets.
• Wales: the DataMapWales LiDAR download.
• Universities and colleges: Digimap Lidar (subscription).

All the English and Welsh LiDAR is free under the Open Government Licence.

Two rules

• Report, don't publish. If you spot something new, tell the county's Historic Environment Record. Don't post maps of possible new sites: they help illegal metal detectorists.
• Most land is private. Look on the screen, not on the ground, unless there is a right of way or permission. Scheduled monuments are protected by law.

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Below here is a record of the earlier versions of this guide, from 2016 on. Some of the links no longer work.

UPDATE September 2025

https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map  for a simple England and Wales view.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/753ad2ebd3554fa696885b8c366c3049/page/LIDAR-Composite-Viewer  is the link to the Environment Agency Lidar Map. Study the guide, bottom left and layers - one of the options in the bottom bar.

https://datamap.gov.wales/maps/new#/ - For maps in Wales - search for Lidar as layers 

Scotland has https://remotesensingdata.gov.scot/data#/map

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UPDATE June 2022 - 

https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map  for a simple England and Wales view.

The Environment Agency   for the most detailed England view - you will have to turn off and on layers - turn off "extent" first - to get the best view.

Natural Resources Wales  - click on Click in Lle Map Browser for Wales - again layers are choosable. (Lle has since closed: use DataMapWales, above.)

Scotland has https://remotesensingdata.gov.scot/data#/map

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Below here is just a record of how we used to do it. 

UPDATE December 2020 - The Environment Agency have updated the database. The easiest way I have found after lots of searching to view the results is to follow this link

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/753ad2ebd3554fa696885b8c366c3049/page/page_16/?views=view_23%2Cview_39

And turn of the EXTENTS map layer.

UPDATE 2018 - since I wrote this post techniques have moved on:

1) Got to https://www.lidarfinder.com/ - fantastic, job done.

2 Or https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map does it all for you


ORIGINAL POST


Ever since the Environment made their LIDAR data for most of England free to use I have been meaning to find a simple way to view it that didn't involve map geekery.

So here is my simple guide so I remember how to do it again, and it might interest you as well.

1) Go to https://data.gov.uk/publisher/environment-agency

2) Click on LIDAR Composite DTM - 2m or one of the other LIDAR data sets (doesn't matter much which at this point).

3) Click on blue "Preview on Map" button

You will then have a map of the UK and a long list of possible active layers on the left.

Scroll down and choose the LIDAR layer you want and zoom in on the map to the area you want.

Not all of England is covered and there are different levels of detail - and it is available as a Digital Surface Model produced from the signal returned to the LIDAR (which includes heights of objects, such as vehicles, buildings and vegetation, as well as the terrain surface) or as a Digital Terrain Model produced by removing objects from the Digital Surface Model.

Enjoy.

Click to embiggen

UPDATE -

https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map does it all for you -

Here as an example is Bladon Camp - heavily overgrown so aerial Bing Map shot doesn't really show it but LIDAR does - https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1013234 for details of it.

UPDATE 2

A commentator, Sem, on http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=Forum&file=viewtopic&topic=6761&forum=2&start=0  points out that there is some Welsh data available as well.

http://lle.gov.wales/home?lang=en
(Lle has since closed: use DataMapWales, above.) To use on-line click on 'LiDAR Data Now Available' followed by the link to 'lle download portal" and finally on 'Preview'. Navigate the map as per Google and use the 'blue thingy' in the top right of the map to choose your base map and detail.

And here is a screen shot from Anglesey with a well known barrow in it :)