Mapping houses is a very slow business. I’ve done almost nothing else during the last 7 months as a full-time job, and have placed several thousand houses on the OSM map, yet that is less than two postcodes in Nottingham (NG3 + NG4). So, my experience is limited. In spite of this, out of the 2,800 photos (126.1 km) that I’ve uploaded to Mapillary in that time, a good number of them feature garages. Like this recent shot:

The above garages are in a reasonable condition, and that is probably due to them being overlooked from their owner’s houses. Far more often they are incredibly broken down & shoddy. And mostly disused, probably due to them being ideal burglar bait. Car owners prefer to park close to their house, and all the streets that I map on an evening are chock-a-block with cars parked up on the kerb and/or parked on hard-standing which has replaced the house front garden.

… See full entry

Mysterious Marker #1

Another couple of these very odd markers marked with a capital V (or in this case SV): (MM#2; MM#3). All are stored on the OSM map as a “boundary_marker”, even though I’m certain that they are not. But what are they?

At the corner of Moore Road & Bennett Road; inscription is “SV”, then either “NCWW” or “NGWW”:

At the corner of Dale Avenue & Rowland Avenue; inscription is less clear:

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My father loved a good natter and I was born & grew up in Hull (a major sea-port in the East of England); these are two of my excuses for being able to talk the hind legs off a donkey. I do find it, however, to be a major asset whilst mapping as long as it is married with active listening (as we shall see shortly).

It was perfectly normal in my youth to strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger at a bus-stop. Or rather, normal for Hull. Indeed, on one of my first visits to London as a teenager (late 1960s) I was blanked by someone when I asked for directions, and was so upset by their ignorance that I chased after them & said in a loud voice “EXCUSE ME ..!”. I quickly learnt that such stand-offish behaviour was normal for London.

Nottingham is halfway between Hull & London and is capable of displaying either kind of reaction (warm or cold, with Hull as a warm place & London as most cold) (which makes Nottingham a bit tepid, of course). Nottingham folks have proven to respond very readily to my questions about their neighbourhood and have indulged my nosiness (another vital personal asset) without a qualm once they have settled themselves to my reasons. Intelligence supplied from householders is the very best asset for every mapper.

Today’s small snippet of such intelligence concerns a rockery protected by CC&R (a small bet: that this is the only one like this on the UK map).

CC&R:

Declaration of Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CC&Rs) … the rules of your neighbourhood (as found within House Deeds)

I was paying a second visit to a service road at the bottom of Anne’s Close, Porchester Gardens. The householder from the end-of-terrace house was busy with a couple of others hauling wheelbarrows along a footpath that I’d mapped on my first visit. The state of that walk at the back of the houses had to be seen to be believed:

… See full entry

Most spam gets quickly dealt with, but these three got through:
(later spam added Saturday + Sunday 8,9 Oct):

• spammy-link from Italian Wine Online (now gone)
• Inflatable bag Lamzac from “Junkstore” (Ukrainian spam; finally removed 29 Oct)
• Papier by yourfoto (now gone)

All the houses on that side of the street are even-numbers, but Number 45, Moore Road is different from the others in more than one way. The most obvious thing is that, apart from a garden shed, there arn’t any buildings on the plot at all. The space bounded by hedges is identical to all neighbouring plots (check the map). The photograph above lets you see in a glance all that was at one time available to the folks of Nottingham town:— a plot of land for them to grow stuff on.

Nottingham was a highly dangerous town on 26 March 1887 when Porchester Gardens began. The reason that the town was dangerous was because of water-born disease (dysentry, etc.). Far too many folks were crammed into far too small a space, whilst their medical men were ignorant of the basic facts of their own trade. A garden like the one above was an opportunity to grow fresh food & enjoy fresh air & water. [I published a more complete story of Porchester Gardens here in June]

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It’s a house at the Porchester Road end of Moore Road in Porchester Gardens, Nottingham. Now, I have to warn you in advance: Moore Road is a rich vein for English oddness. My last post was based on the smallest road in Porchester Gardens and, naturally enough, it is also off Moore Road (although at the other end, near Westdale Road West).

Anyway, you have your warning. I’ve just started putting Moore Road houses up on the map, and there are lots of odd things that I can choose to show. The first (strictly the second) is the very first house on the corner of Porchester Road and Moore Road. It looks fairly normal from Porchester Road, but round the corner on Moore Road it has an abutment and the abutment is castellated (for lovers of brick porn notice the Tamworth Blue Brick used both as a damp-proof course and also as decoration; very nice - the road is falling away from Porchester Road down the hill, so that damp-proof level is rather high at this point):—

(excellent!)

…is called Ward Avenue and it is now back on the map. Here is the view from Moore Road, looking up the Avenue:

Those gates on the right are for a house on Moore Road and the fence straight ahead is the end of the road, which may help to show just how short this road is (there is only one house on the road; you can just see the left-hand front of the house tucked around the end on the right). On the other side of the fence on the left is Westmoore Close, and the reason that Ward Avenue has only just been re-instated onto the map is that a couple of years ago the straight bit of Westmoore was mistakenly renamed to Ward Avenue. Whoops.

… See full entry

A chap on Porchester Road has had quite some fun with his garden:—

(love the Meercats) (again!)

… See full entry

Resistance is Futile 1

More tales from the slopes of the Earl of Carnarvon’s old stomping ground, formerly known as Marshall Hill and now known as Porchester Gardens.

What we are going to see here is the tale of a householder on Ethel Avenue that wanted to demolish his old cottage, which sits on a 0.16 hectare site, and replace it with 3 new 4-bedroom houses. In pursuit of that he has uprooted almost every green thing on the site (making it a wasteland), blocked access to a green way and received written objections from (almost) every neighbour. The application has been turned down, a judge has told him to restore the Public right-of-way & in response he is throwing a major-league strop, shrouding all his boundary with black plastic. Quite a tale. But first, some brief history of the area.

Marshall Hill was part of land enclosed by the Earl of Kingston (1672), sold in entirety by Kingston’s heirs to Carnarvon (1912), and sold in lots to Nottingham citizens that wanted allotments for gardens (1887). Messrs Samuel Robinson, Charles Bennett and David Whittingham acted as guarantors for the latter action (the names of these three are known by householders throughout this 130 acre (52.6 hectares) neighbourhood). Only 2 years later roads began to be laid out & houses built on the plots; that really began to take off in the period following the Great War (1920s & 1930s).

Two things that, in my experience, feature a lot in Porchester Gardens are unadopted roads and Public rights of way; this little tale has both:

… See full entry

Mapping deep in the heart of Porchester Gardens, Mapperley (named after the 3rd Earl of Carnarvon, who sold the land) (from ‘Baron Porchester’, his 1st title), and here is a little of what some of it looks like:

Just around the corner from where I took that view is the bungalow of a chap that used to have an Ash Tree in his garden. Now I love Ash Trees, and I think that many other Englishmen think the same.They are unique for having young branches that are very straight & supple and thus are perfect for making arrows (classically a yard (900cms) long). It was English arrows married with the Longbow that saw victory for Edward III at Crécy, Poitiers & Henry V at Agincourt. However, Englishmen may love them, but French aristos & bureaucrats do not.

… See full entry

Last weekend I was down in Ware again to baby-sit my grandchildren (‘babysit’? at 14 & 11? maybe not). Mum had the opportunity for a hen-night away (or was it a wedding? I forget) and as a single mum gets almost zero chances for time to herself. She had all the other days covered but needed someone for Sunday so I got the call. As a grandparent you are a whore for your grandkids (pay attention! I’m trying to pass some wisdom across here) so there was never any doubt that I’d say ‘yes’.

We had a fantastic day together. I suggested seeing a film on the evening & Mickey suggested Kubo And The Two Strings. Wow! What an inspired suggestion! Someone on twitter (kubothemovie) said:

Well, Kubo and the two strings just about blew my ruddy socks off. Thank god the kids spotted it and dragged me along.

My sentiments precisely. It is rated PG but make no mistake, this will thoroughly satisfy every human with a living heart, soul & spirit. Go watch it.

The following day was Monday, 26 Sep.. After making sure that they got away for school on time I faced a 2 hour journey back up the Great North Road to Nottingham in time to meet a British Gas salesman to examine my deceased boiler. Just enough time to map a couple more streets in Ware.

I mentioned last time that the King George Fields area where they live has homes built in the 1930s – the same period as for much of Carlton NG3 & NG4 (and for the country as a whole, as the period following WWI saw a tremendous expansion in the housing stock) (just in time for the Nazis to come along and bomb it all flat again during the second half).

… See full entry

It took more than 6 months to reach my personal target (map a boundary set by various roads, culminating at the ancient – although now mostly gently rotting – centre of Carlton). Now, I do admit that I’ve still got to complete a bit of the extreme west end of this mapping (Porchester Gardens), but the greatest extent has been done. In the light of that, perhaps I can indulge myself a little.

Close by the junction of Burton Road and Cavendish Drive is the Army Reserve Centre (‘ARC’) of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. They are a cavalry unit, and this is not a bad picture of one of their vehicles:

Useful for shifting the worst of the traffic jams, I would have thought.

I wrote in June 2016 about CCTV cameras on Carlton Hill top, but it seems that in Carlton centre they take their Neighbourhood Watch even more seriously:

never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

it tolls for thee.

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, “Meditation XVII”
John Donne
(written in 1624 whilst Dean of St. Paul’s, following a potentially fatal bout of spotted fever)

A young chap that lives in West View Road, Carlton (a private, unadopted road) explained during my latest mapping session that his house is subject to Chancel Repair Liability. The object in the middling distance below is responsible for that (it is called ‘Gedling Church’):

The Carlton householder explained Chancel Tax as applying to those that “can hear the Church bells”. The full story (Wikipedia) is less romantic and much more complex, but the statement is accurate enough in it’s way. It is a uniquely English & Welsh story, involving medieval (pre-1536) church history, Henry VIII & rich men’s responsibilities that have come to haunt modern land-owners (those that own their own house).

… See full entry

As yet another in the “for heaven’s sake, what on earth has this got to do with mapping” series of incidental snapshots, drawn from life & art seen on the streets of Carlton & Gedling, as your intrepid mapper penetrates deeper & deeper into the hitherto unexplored heartlands of England, I bring to you one of the unacknowledged obsessions of the Brits: Fairies

This plaque was on a house on one of the eastern slopes of Marshall Hill and caught my attention immediately. The lady householder told me that she purchased it a few years back via the internet.

The Oirish (and, indeed, all the celts in the British Isles) (which is to say, everyone except those descendants of William the Bastard) freely admit to an active engagement with the Little Folk. As is so often the case, this is just the English being disingenuous, since they are as fascinated by the natural spirits of this place as everyone else.

I’ve just added https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:old_name=Stoney Pit Lane to Cavendish Road. This information comes from a historian within #66 (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:start-date=1930), a splendid lady who, due to old age, now has difficulty weeding her garden. Her body may be becoming infirm, but her mind is as sharp as a pin.

The houses on the north side of Cavendish Road increase quite normally until Belper Avenue. The last house (Short Cut To Beauty) is actually numbered on Belper Av; it’s neighbour is 78 Cavendish Road, and the next house on the other side of Belper Av is Dom’s Barbers, which is number 206. Originally, Stoney Pit Lane finished at Number 78. Then near the end of the last millennium the road was both extended & renamed to Cavendish Road. This information was not recorded previously.

My historian’s mother was born in 1900 & began to attend school in 1903. That was not normal for the times. Each morning, her mum’s cousin would call at the house in the morning, make a fuss of her mother, then carry on to school. Then her mother began to follow behind her cousin to school. Each morning a teacher would bring her mother back home until, eventually, after days & days of this happening, they let her stay. Naturally, she sat in on the lessons. By the age of 12 her mum had passed every exam that they could throw at her.

My historian also told me about Farmer Kerry & Farmer Tattersall. Dark-haired Kerry was the farmer that owned the fields on the College (south) side of Carlton Road, whilst blonde-haired Tattersall was the farmer that owned the fields on the Petrol Station (north) side of the same road. She went to school with Alma & Olga (Farmer Tattersall’s daughters), and explained to me that the farmer insisted on having roads named after his daughters when he sold his fields.

Another snippet was that the authorities had to grade the top off Carlton Hill, so that the trams could get over it.

… See full entry

I’ve written before at my surprise in finding large numbers of houses in Carlton, Nottingham NG4, UK built between the 1880s & 1930s, that still had outdoor khazis. The ones that I used as my illustration were opposite the middle of the Carlton Cemetery (16 July, Worth Street).

In the past 2 months I have mapped clockwise down Cavendish Road, Coningswath Road and all the roads of Marshall Hill, Westdale Lane West then all the way back down Cavendish Lane on the other side of the road and yesterday (Thu 15 Sep) struck the western end of the same Cemetery. It should, therefore, not be a surprise to find some more Khazis outside each of these (at a guess) 1930s flats, but it was.

There was a service road supplying (what is now) some waste ground at the back of the flats (you can see the Cemetery on the other side of the fence:—

Whilst exploring that I spotted a walk-through to the rear of the flats, and there were the khazis (these are for 4 flats, 2 in each of 2 adjacent houses):—

… See full entry

I’ve mentioned Stone Lions before, and have seen many, many more since then in the gardens of Carlton & Marshall Hill (and ignored most, as I do not wish to bore with unnecessary repetition), but these pink-eyed lions on Cavendish Road seemed to call for attention:—

The same 4 lions (only 3 pictured here) can be seen in Google StreetView, but they are grimy & street-dark (Cavendish Road is a main thoroughfare for cars & buses from Nottingham & Carlton). Since then, the householder has not only had them blast-cleaned to bright-white but has had their eyes painted pink. Excellent!

In complete contrast, here is a garden in Cromford Avenue, sheltered & away from that main road:—

… See full entry

I’ve come across my second un-named un-adopted road (2 in 6 months). I cannot seem to find any info on the wiki for how to map these. I used the following page as my reference:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:highway

In the absence of specific info, in brief I mapped using the following values:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway=residential
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:noname=yes
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:noexit=yes (it is a cul-de-sac) (note: this value generally NOT advised (see comments))
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:unadopted=yes

Links to wiki pages on values to use, and why, much appreciated.

For those unfamiliar with the term “unadopted road” (they are common in England), the following comes from a UK Government publication:

‘Unadopted’ roads are those roads not maintained by a highway authority as defined by Highways Act 1980

For most unadopted residential roads the duty to maintain it falls to the frontagers, ie the owners of the property fronting that road, which may include those where the side, or length, of their property fronts the unadopted road.

A note on wiki URLs: HTTP fails to redirect to HTTPS:

When finding the wiki Key:highway page just now Google gave me a HTTP url for the page. I manually changed it to HTTPS, and it showed fine. However, it did NOT redirect from port-80 to port-443 of it’s own accord. It was announced recently that Google is due to begin penalising HTTP pages. Act now, webmasters!

I’ve been mapping houses south of Westdale Lane, Mapperly/Porchester/Gedling/Carlton (people seem to give it different names - I call it Marshall Hill) for the last couple of weeks. I kept seeing butterflies fixed to the outside of houses, but they seemed exceptionally kitsch (see the comments), so I ignored them. However, finally, the garage at number 10 won me over, so here it is for your delight: