[Tech1] Updating

[Mike Giles]

Surrey has an interactive map which does name all the properties, even though they haven’t updated our house name after ten years! Like others who have mentioned the same, our village, only has house names and is a nightmare for the uninitiated delivery driver. This gives rise to people being suspicious of white van men who seem to be casing the joint, but in fact are simply looking for a specific house. Is Surrey unique in having such a map? 

Since writing the first three sentences, I have looked at the Surrey interactive map again, to see if you could find a property by house name only and it proves that you can. In so doing, I have discovered that they have in fact registered our new house name on the database, but not on the map itself, which could also confuse. Having searched the database in vain for a White Gates in Westhumble, I then tried Winterberry and it found the right house, but showed the old name. I was equally surprised to discover just how many houses in Surrey are called White Gates.

I also partly answered my own question by discovering that Hampshire also has an interactive map, although I didn’t explore it, so I presume that many other counties will have the same sort of facility.


Whenever I do need to ask for directions, I am reminded of a story my father often recounted. Donkeys years ago, he was looking for a country address when he was a rep for a monumental mason, and he stopped in a lane to ask an old chap working in his front garden. The guy seemed pleased to have an excuse to stop working and came out into the road, leaning in through the car window, with a strong smell of cider on his breath, whilst he recounted a long story about the building of a wall which he mentioned as a feature on the way to the property in question. This was apparently a prodigious wall of impressive length and he was proud to have been involved in the building of it as a young man. He had chapter and verse about the number of bricks, the bags of sand and cement and the depth of the footings, the number of workmen involved and the convoy of horses and carts delivering the materials. He also gave precise dates as to the beginning of construction and its completion, rounding off his story with the revelation that this major landmark had been demolished a few years ago, so it could no longer be relied upon as an aid to navigation, or for any other purpose, for that matter!  

And I have actually heard from another old countryman, whom I asked for directions, the old adage that “If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here!"

Mike G



> On 17 Sep 2020, at 22:00, patheigham via Tech1 <tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Love to put that into a pianola – what would it play: “This Ole House”?
> Pat
> (Sorry, I have a Milliganesque sense of humour!)
>  
> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10
>  
> From: Alan Taylor via Tech1 <mailto:tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk>
> Sent: 17 September 2020 21:40
> To: Tech-Ops-chit-chat <mailto:tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [Tech1] Updating
>  
> If you appreciate old maps, one option for a map of a very long ribbon development could be to use a modern take on Ogilby’s maps, made during the reign of Charles II. 
>  
> This is a typical example.
>  
> 
>  
>  You could arrange several stripes on one page. Side roads might require stripes of their own if they are long.  Variable scales could work for you, as maps of house names don’t need accurate scales, just the means of showing which houses are in sequence along the roads.
> 
> 
> Alan Taylor
>  
>  
> 
> 
>  
> 
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