Ultimately the answer will lay in whether you want to get married, or not, and whether OSM can source open-GPX, shape files, whatever, for all the UK Ecclesiastical Parishes.

Until the Parish Councils Act of 1894, there was zero difference between a Civil Parish and an Ecclesiastical Parish. The 1894 act extracted all non-Church features & vested them in newly-created Civil Parishes. The principal feature that the Established Church retains, and which affects all members of the public living within an Ecclesiastical Parish, is the right to be married within their local Church. Now obviously, in order to be able to know which is that ‘local Church’, a person needs to be able to search for it upon a suitably equipped map. At this moment, that is NOT OSM.

example: the Porchester Ecclesiastical Boundary

11 September: I stated in my 27 August Diary that “The Ecclesiastical Boundary runs down Marshall Hill Drive”; not true. The vicar at St James, Porchester, the Revd. Phil Williams, gave me a copy of the Porchester parish boundary (many thanks to him) and the Boundary runs along Valley Road and across the bottom of Marshall Hill Drive, and then up Simkin Avenue. However, at no point does it run up (nor down) Marshall Hill Drive apart from that tiny little segment at the bottom.

For reference, the Porchester Ecclesiastical Boundary (Diocese of Southwell & Nottingham, Gedling Deanery) that the vicar gave me was traced on an Ordnance Survey map (grinds teeth) and only part-follows existing streets:

Starting in the north-west corner:

… See full entry

This is on Cavendish Road, Carlton NG4, just after meeting Coningswath Road. It has a similar shape to a Boundary Marker, but does not have any of the normal markings for Nottingham or Carlton (only a capital ‘V’ + numeral ‘3’). Anyone have any idea what it is?

next day added:
fwiw it is on the map here.

added Friday 9 Sep:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Piero Nussio sent me a personal message, and it looks to be an interesting possibility:

… See full entry

These are pansies in a garden in Cavendish Road, Carlton (love the Meercat & horses!):

There just has to be a PhD paper waiting to be written on the use of plaster dolls in English gardens. They are virtually ubiquitous in Nottingham NG4.

I cannot find the IRC details to report these any other way, so here are links to recent spam:

1. Jabong.c0m Coupon codes, Deals & Cashback… (removed)
2. การกิน ทำให้คุณดูอ่อนกว่าวัย
   Translation: Earlier today, I’ll get it. To eat some food and make you look younger tender… (removed)

(many thanks to those that removed them)

coda:

I finally found the email from SomeoneElse buried under a hundred others giving direction to report spammers in the #osm-dev IRC channel on OTRS - see OSM wiki help. Maybe next time.

An upload has just been made by myself for Marwood Road, Carlton NG4, UK and it has four houses in a row (2 sets of semi-detached) that are each numbered ‘1’ (and two next-door to them that are each numbered ‘375’), and yet they are all correctly numbered. What is going on?

Now yes, I’m being a little bit naughty in my description, because two of those houses are numbered ‘1a’ and ‘1b’, but the other two are each “1 Marwood” and are part of the same semi-detached house. In fact, whilst surveying it was worse, because whilst these four houses are obviously near the beginning of the street there were two houses before them, one of which was positioned on Cavendish Road, but the bungalow was clearly positioned on Marwood Road. That bungalow was residential & occupied (though the owners were out) and no-one else on the street knew what it’s number was - and neither did it display one. Truly, this was a street designed to give taxi-drivers a nervous breakdown.

This is the street: Marwood Road, Carlton NG4; the houses concerned are at the eastern end, on the south-side of the street. ‘1a’ and ‘1b’ are part of a semi-detached house that is too new (as is the bungalow) to be shown on the current Google satellite view, although Bing does show them (it is normally the other way around) (Bing metadata capture date of “10/1/2011-3/26/2012”). West of [‘1a’, ‘1b’] is [1, 1]. The first house is 1 Marwood Road, and the second is 1 Marwood Crescent. Gaah!

I decided that to answer the mystery of the bungalow was going to require some hard snooping; there must be a number somewhere. And there was (carefully hidden in plain sight, next to the door, but much too small to read from the street):

… See full entry

English Eccentricity #1

Seen today whilst mapping in Carlton NG4:

Look, the guy wants a xmassy-sorta fibre-glass polar-bear on the bay-window of his house, and if he does want a sorta-xmassy fibre-glass polar-bear on the bay-window of his house, I say “why not?” (though it could do with a wash).

Today’s Weather Alert from weather.com said: “CHANCE OF RAIN: 100%” (they weren’t kidding). In typical macho style I put on my rain-proof jacket & went out mapping anyway. I stayed out too long.

Surprisingly, the rain doesn’t penetrate the smartphone — a credit to the design — but it does interfere with the capacitance on the glass surface, and that interferes with it’s touch-sensitive design, which becomes a real pain after a short while. In spite of it all I managed whilst mapping to get a couple of photos of interesting house numbers to show here…

The first (above) comes from very close to last week’s MPG. I think that some may think this a little twee, and the mixture of Japanese-inspired artwork & renaissance-inspired cherubs is certainly odd, but I don’t care - the owners like them & so do I.

For a complete contrast (below) how about this black cat (you can possibly detect traces of rain on the lens here):

… See full entry

I try to feature the best stuff I come across whilst mapping. This was the latest:

Others have been: Ladybirds + squirrel; Flowerpot man + Gargoyles; No Riff-Raff; Floral Abundance; Tweety Pie, Kenya Art + Plaster Dolls; Leaded Light door + another high-class door-sign. That last link also contains links to previous street art featured in these posts. I do spoil you, y’know.

Oscar – the southern lion in Slab Square – was first featured in Stone Lions of England. Here he is again:

I’ve long wanted a photo of his northern companion, Leo (although do not bother to ask why I did not photograph both on the first occasion, as I cannot recall), but I do not get into town often, nor want to stay when I get there. I managed it today, although the bright sun possibly defeated my smartphone’s circuitry:

… See full entry

Mapping on the flat bit of Marshall Hill at the top & a bit of the wall at the front of one house had some Ladybirds fastened to it. The woman of the house told me that the rear of their place had loads of different things attached to it, and she had recently let some spread to the front. I asked if there was a particular reason for the ladybirds, and she said “because I like them, and they look good”.

And for the same reason, here’s a little tableaux spotted at a bungalow near Marshall Hill Drive:

… See full entry

My very first Diary entry concerned paranoia within the English Middle-Class, and a July entry documented a slow pursuit by such a guy up a steep hill. There have been many others, always a pain but undocumented, and the “Middle-Class ‘Paranoid Guy’” (MPG) has therefore become a stock item for me. However, I’ve now discovered how to teach others to discover his lair (read on)…

Yesterday’s (Monday, 29 August 2016) MPG was dislodged from his lair in a bungalow in The Mount, a Neighbourhood Watch area near the top of Marshall Hill. Now, the opening sentence of this paragraph has actually just given you some important clues; one or more of the following will make it likely that a MPG is around:—

1. A street with a pretentious name
2. A detached/semi-detached house or (best of all) a bungalow
   (these men—they are almost always men—are normally retired) (like me)
3. Their street has a Neighbourhood Watch and they are active within it

… See full entry

I do not know quite how I managed not to see these the last time I passed the tennis courts close to Huckerbys Field, but I didn’t:—

It was 27 July 2016 and I made a Diary Entry. My walk was along the identical path, just in the opposite direction. Well, whatever; they will be up on the map shortly.

This is a small meditation upon the fragility & fleeting nature of life and an encouragement, from one who is becoming old, to fix your gaze upon what you can be & never to stop.

I found a couple of houses on my last survey that appeared to be abandoned. The one above was particularly poignant because of it’s 2nd floor portico; I could imagine the owners and their guests in days past, standing with cool drinks on hot, balmy summer evenings, gazing across the vista of the fields of Marshall Hill as it fell away below them (Marshall Hill is one of the taller hills in Nottingham, and the houses that now cloak the hill are worth many millions of £ GBP). Today, the house is unloved & ill-kept, hedges, bushes and trees growing to the skies and hiding the house from view most of the time.

… See full entry

Let’s celebrate the eccentricity that lies at the heart of the English character.

This is the Flowerpot Man on the roof that I spoke of in my earlier Diary entry. I was worried about rain then, but it was spotting all day today (and raining hard by tea-time) so why worry today? However, it turned out that the householder valued his privacy, had a lock on the gate & no bell. I needed to get higher to get a good photo & could not (or at least, not without breaking in). My cheap smartphone has a decent camera but only a digital zoom (which I did not use), so the man is very small.

The next picture has another of my favourites, which is Gargoyles, in Marshall Hill Drive.

… See full entry

I feel like this myself at times…

This was the greeting that met you on coming through the side-entrance at a bungalow on Hallam Road but was not the best I saw yesterday (Thursday afternoon, 25 August). That was a Flowerpot man on top of a house roof in Pilkington Road (no, really). However, I was worried about the delay that obtaining agreement to photograph it might take. It had been pouring down with rain earlier on & I was worried about further rain soon (it never happened). I’m going back to the house another day, so maybe will be able to feature it soonish.

A recent Diary entry (A Suggestion to Fix Poor LSN in the UK) contained the phrase “Why those facilities fail for a substantial part (40%) of the UK”, and I promised to publish the raw data that led to the ‘40%’ claim. This is the fulfilment of that promise and be warned, it is long & intensely computer geeky.

In brief, that earlier Diary entry said:

1. Location, Search & Naming facilities (LSN) require the presence of an “admin_level=10” (civil parish) area in the UK
2. 40% of the UK does not have such an area, as it is unparished
3. (thoughts on how to fix it)

The above both is, and is not, true (real life is usually a bit more complicated than that) but it was the best that I could manage & wanted to get the debate kicked off. In addition, some later spreadsheet-work (see bottom) indicates that it is more like 60% for the nations’ cities, and 100% for all the major conurbations. Now for the methodology of acquiring, plus full results that led to, the 40% claim…

A site maintained by The Maarssen Mapper contains a page of all UK Civil Parishes in the form of GPX file downloads. The top of each file has an XML header that looks like this (this one is Birchgrove_Community):—

… See full entry

This is a research document; it is going to attempt to explain:—

1. The fundamental basis on which Location, Search & Naming (LSN) facilities in OSM work
2. Why those facilities fail for a substantial part (40%) of the UK
3. How to fix it

You need to know that the writer has been mapping for only 5 months, and therefore only part-understands what he is talking about. One (possible) advantage is that his is a fresh eye, plus he has the ability to think for himself. As the writer enjoys stories, much of this will be presented in that form.

• Local government in England:(counties, districts and unitary authorities) (pdf)
• Local government in England:(Parish and town councils) (pdf)
• Counties, Non-metropolitan Districts and Unitary Authorities + GSS (ONS archive)

On Thursday 9 June 2016 I began to map outside of my home patch in Nottingham NG3 and met the Boundary marker which, since 1877, has marked the Boundary Line between the City of Nottingham and Gedling, and also between NG3 & NG4. I was now heading for Carlton, Gedling.

One feature that had been common throughout my NG3 mapping was that LSN had consistently failed with OSM. When I was mapping close to St Anns OSM said that I was in Thorneywood, and so on. By the time that I reached Carlton I’d gotten the basic map methods under my belt & could pay more attention to the condundrum of the fact that when I was working in Carlton (a Suburb) OSM said that I was in Bakersfield (at the time a Neighbourhood, but now a suburb), or even Thorneywood (another Neighbourhood).

Practical examples can focus the mind, and this post is typical. I placed the Diary arrow in Highfield Drive, Carlton, but the result was: “Location: Thorneywood, Sneinton, Nottingham, East Midlands, England, United Kingdom”, which isn’t even the correct District. That was just embarassing.

… See full entry

There has been an increased alertness to my changeset comments in recent weeks. I thought it reasonable, since I’m half-inventing words, to explain at greater length what on earth was going on.

I started mapping in March by entering house numbers & names onto the map & have continued doing that most days since. I’ve been using terracer within JOSM to do it, including associatedStreet relations for each house, something that terracer made easy. The team that maintain JOSM have been working hard to allow it to work under Java-8 (the dependency was previously on Java-7); however, many plugins (including terracer) are unmaintained and, as the chief developer informed me, they do not bother to check what effect their changes have upon any plugin.

Shortly after I started, version-32158 started crashing JOSM when certain options were selected and, shortly after, it was NOT possible to create a relation with terracer under any circumstances. That circumstance continues today, using the current-stable JOSM-10786 (terracer-32699).

This is how to create a new associatedStreet relation:

1. Select your street ways + all houses
2. From the menu, choose menu:Presets | Relations | Associated Street
3. From the dialog, Enter the name of the street
4. Press “New relation”
5. (house members should get a ‘house’ role, whilst the street ways get a ‘street’ role)

That was fine, and it worked, but I only knew how to create a new relation, and not how to add new members to an existing relation. Consequently, and especially with big roads, the number of relations for each road began to grow. I was fragging (fragmenting) the street relations.

Eventually, I discovered how to add new houses to an existing associatedStreet relation. This is how you do it:

… See full entry

(that’s a mixture of English & French lavender in the foreground)

One of the glories of English gardens is the astonishing abundance of flowers. Calverton Avenue was built by Gedling Pit in 1954 to provide housing for 80 employees. One of those houses today has the most beautiful and astonishing variety of flowers blooming under the August sun. The lady of the house was kind enough to allow me to photograph some of them. Here is a closer shot:—

… See full entry

I was going stir-crazy & got back onto the road to do some field-work in Valley Road, only to discover this:

(you may be more mature than me, but I found it funny; as a child I liked Warnor Bros cartoons way more than Disney)

I’m sorry to have to say that I found the 1930s detached & semi-detached houses in Valley Road & Prospect Road deeply boring. However, the residents were most helpful in helping me stem off dehydration by providing water + salt on request (both roads are on a hill & it was hot hot hot).

There were two interesting houses in Prospect Drive. This house board was made in Kenya:—

… See full entry