IT is the giant mosaic made up of thousands of unwanted maps.

This huge collection, laid out in the shape of Great Britain, contains records of the nation’s landscape dating back nearly a hundred years.

Staff at the Nursling-based Ordnance Survey headquarters spent hours creating the eye-catching mosaic, which is made up of 3,000 maps.

The illustrations were collected as part of a trade-in policy where people who send their outdated maps to the Nursling offices get a voucher in return with some money off for a new version.

One of the maps, covering the Bournemouth and Swanage areas, dates back to 1919.

Spokeswoman Melanie Osborne said: “We created the map of Great Britain showing the maps which have been returned using our pink OS Land Rangers for England, yellow Outdoor Leisure maps for Wales and orange OS Explorer maps for Scotland.

“The scheme has been a massive success and we have been overwhelmed by the number of maps that have been returned.”

The trade-in scheme runs until the end of April.