Communications leader in a major organisation, photographer, writer. Former government surveyor and officer in council borough engineers department.

Currently mapping the A580 East Lancashire Road corridor house by house, mainly in the Wigan Borough area so far. I try to give addresses, building types, any relevant history and start date if known. I’ll also include useful local knowledge including verifiable information from people in and around the properties which I’m adding to the map.

Thank you for suggestions and revisions received. I’m always keen to learn more. Can I echo some early advice I got about effective use of cadastral data: thanks.

If you are local to the Wigan/Leigh A580 area or if you’re working in areas where I’ve been out and about, I’d be delighted to say hello.

I do sometimes reach out via messages to cross-reference things. Not everyone wants to reply but if you can respond, please do.

Nice to be part of UK chats on Big Blue Button and at recent Geomobs. See you in London next month.

Recent successes including finding and adding a residential road in Astley which is hundreds of years old and understanding the old land use influencing why there are gaps in modern housing developments. Also correcting many ‘spiky buildings’ labelled vaguely and giving them the correct specific housing tags and details.

ADVICE NEEDED: I’ve asked on various chat forums but please message me with a way to record detail on terraced houses. I map each property as an individual, numbered hereditament of course. But how to map the name of the whole terrace as it appears on a plaque usually in the middle of the row? It’s not the road name or an individual house name but this is valuable identification (and build date) information publicly displayed and people do use this to identify a locality.

Useful links:

• https://weeklyosm.eu/
• https://thegeomob.com/
• https://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/#loc=11/53.5159/-2.5516&item=xxxx&level=1%2C2
• https://www.doogal.co.uk/UKPostcodes?Search=WN
• https://simon04.dev.openstreetmap.org/whodidit/
• https://fieldpapers.org/compose#12/53.4971/-2.5394
• https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=11.5&lat=53.52583&lon=-2.40585&layers=270&b=ESRIWorld&o=100
• https://hdyc.neis-one.org/?no%20details%20provided%20here (my mapping stats)

All my mapping is small scale and manual. I use iD editor after on site visits and surveys. I know there’s a lot of data crunching apps, Git Hubbery and JOSM things. I can only use iD editor and would gladly have a pint with anyone would can explain some of the more sophisticated stuff. I’m sure it would make my life easier but even with videos there’s a huge gap for me between lists of software and how they work!