Wednesday 20 October 2010

What's in a name, Part II

A sure sign of succesful map, is when it blends into the application and serves an unobtrusive yet key role. I noted earlier in What's in a name? two such examples that make a mappliance (map + appliance). I found last week during 13 October English Day a fun project asking the same question - Location Lingo joined the English Project to the Ordnance Survey, and allows the man in the street to enter anecdotal names they know to share with the rest of the world - isn't this yet another form of crowdsourcing?

The point here, however, is that a very simple web form is greatly enhanced by an OS map: it allows you to zoom into the locale, and double-click it to pinpoint its location; that automatically generates the longitude, latitude and OS grid reference.

As I'm a medieval history buff, I submitted two local entries, one outside a nearby village north of Cambridge UK and one right in Cambridge:
Place nickname : Butt Lane
Official place name
:
Type of Location: Road
Other Type:
Location
: Impington, Cambridge
Story : In the 13th c. a law required that every man aged 15-60 have a bow and train usually on Sundays at 'butts' where they shot targets . Some were at the end of the village like this one (Impington was much larger then) or at the edge of greens in town (see also Cambridge city entry).
OS Reference : TL 46282 63417
Latitude : 52.24950737
Longitude : 0.14140169

And I couldn't resist this later historic tidbit re: Denmark Road just up the street from my house, on the road that leads to the Cottenham Point-to-point race course - from British History Online:
Chequers Lane, from the alehouse at the High Street end, was renamed Denmark Road after a visit to Cottenham races in 1870 by the Princess of Wales, Alexandra of Denmark

double-click to enlarge

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