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Recap on Tour of the Netherlands

Posted by b-unicycling on 2 February 2025 in English. Last updated on 3 February 2025.

I’m back home! All the uploads done! Yeah!

Street-level imagery

As I had written about earlier, I was on tour with actually, to be precise, one of the bands I’m in under the title/ program “The Dubliners Experience” in the Netherlands from Jan 15th to Feb 1st. The GoPro Max was our constant companion on the roof of the tour bus. It covers mostly motorways and the areas around concert venues, of course. I also walked around the campsite we stayed at (band life isn’t as glamorous as they make it out to be in the movies after all) with it, but that imagery is not super useful, I’m afraid. How much can you map in a fen, when there are not even leaves on the trees to map species…But still, the area got covered.

I was especially keen to upload to Panoramax, because the coverage was quite poor which does not mean to discredit the people who have already contributed, of course!

I’ll give you some before and after screenshots, some of which I had already shared on Mastodon yesterday.

Before I started, this was the situation in the Netherlands for both flat and 360° images. screenshot Panoramax Netherlands

And this was yesterday: screenshot Panoramax Netherlands 2025-02-01

This was the state of 360° coverage on Jan 14th 2025: screenshot Panoramax 360° Netherlands

And this yesterday: screenshot Panoramax 360° Netherlands 2025-02-01

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I tracked where we were going and what I had captured using OSMAnd, so I could prevent duplicate sequences. There are still some duplicates, because of the foggy conditions during the first week and because I didn’t want to risk the camera turning off while inactive on a long drive. OSMAnd screenshot with tracks marked

As I had mentioned in the previous diary post, I “lost” (i.e. deleted) sequences where the camera had tilted, because I did not know how to correct that. Stupid me. If anyone knows how to or knows of a tutorial, please comment. I don’t even know what to search for.

Mapping

While on the way to concert venues, I added a couple of notes along the way to be resolved after the show. Some were resolved by other people in an amazingly short time. So, dankewell you to those folks!

Thatched buildings

I have an interest in thatched buildings, so that was something I mapped being driven and walking using roof:material=thatch. I added a couple more last night, bringing the total to 101. While mapping that, I noticed that many of the buildings are not squared off. Is there any good reason for that? It made adding building:part=yes for roof:material=thatch a bit awkward. Of course, I also added a couple of missing buildings (mostly sheds or maybe car ports, hard to tell) which had not been covered in the last import by the Dutch mapping community.

Defibrillators

Around the theatres, quite a few defibrillators were missing, even though the mapping density of them in general seems to be good in the Netherlands. Many a time, I got OSMAnd out to map one only to find that it was already mapped. But maybe mappers don’t go to the theatre much, so it’s good I came along. I added 25 in total, some also just spotted from the band bus.

Backstage prefix

I continued on with the backstage prefix to map amenities (showers, washing machine etc) for artists found backstage. I don’t expect this to take off in general, but we map amenities for babies, wheelchair users , why not also this. I know it’s not easily verifiable, but there is no harm in doing it imho. And to be fair, I added nappy changing tables wherever I saw them. I made a point using every bathroom I could to survey that. ;-)

Loading ramps and artists’ entrances (name=artiesteningang) into the venues were also added to make it easier in the future to know where to go, because there are a lot of one-way systems and pedestrianized areas around the venues.

Obviously, I added missing shops, pubs, street lights, street cabinets, details on restaurants and whatever else I fancied.

I must say, I really appreciate always having a mission, so the waiting around doesn’t get too draining and you “force” yourself to explore your surroundings, if time permits. I wish I had had more time during daylight, because we mostly played in small towns which probably don’t get too much attention from mappers on a regular basis, but we usually arrived for soundcheck at 16:00 with the sun setting around 17:00, so it was quite limiting.

And I made it to #56 in the statistics for the Netherlands on neis-one!

Location: Wissel, Epe, Gelderland, Netherlands, 8162 RK, Netherlands

On Tour in the Netherlands

Posted by b-unicycling on 20 January 2025 in English. Last updated on 31 January 2025.

Street-level imagery

Since last Thursday, I’m touring the Netherlands with the band I’m in. I brought the GoPro Max sponsored by Meta, because I thought it would be a great opportunity to get lots of footage for Panoramax which has little coverage in the Netherlands so far. We’re staying in the same place all the time, near Epe in Gelderland and fan out for the gigs almost all over the Netherlands. We’ll be playing until the 31st of January.

Screenshot from Panoramax showing the progress on 2025-01-31

Unfortunately, it’s been very foggy since we arrived, so the imagery is not the best. It is also very cold, and the third trip (to Zutphen, if I remember correctly), the metal on the holder hinge shrunk and the camera tilted back, so that footage was fairly useless.

I upload the images to mapillary first, after all, they sponsored the camera, so it takes a while to get them onto Panoramax, and the internet at the accommodation doesn’t seem as quick as what I’m used to.

Here’s a link to the footage gathered footage on Panoramax, but it’s still a work in progress, of course.

Mapping by survey

Of course, I can’t stop myself from mapping from the van window or walking around that little bit between sound check and gig. I’m mostly adding bicycle parking (I know it’s a clichee that the Netherlands are great for cycling, but good Lord, are they!), post boxes, defibribrillators, missing shops and whatever else. I’ve also added a bit of roof:material=thatch, because I find it fascinating how much is still around, compared to Ireland. Even though I was told by our sound engineer that some of it is made of plastic. Disgusting. But since I can’t see that from afar, I’ll still map it as roof:material=thatch.

Mapping theatre details

Every night, apart from when we’re off like today, we’re in a different theatre, and usually we don’t know what to expect in amenities. Some of them are fairly large theatres with a corresponding large backstage area with many amenities like showers, microwaves, washing machine and tumble dryer, games etc. We don’t have a self-service washing machine at the accommodation which I had expected, so I would personally like to know beforehand what to expect at a theatre. For future reference, I have started adding the facilities with a backstage prefix such as at Het Kruispunt in Barendrecht: OSM Screenshot with backstage tags I know this is very niche micro-mapping, but why not?

Mapping from satellite imagery

If you follow my journey, you’ll know that I have a big interest in history. How interesting to find that the start_date of the houses is mapped everywhere! From what I could see, there was a huge import of buildings (only the larger ones, no sheds or garages) with their addresses and start date in 2014. Needless to say, that has become quite outdated. I’ve added a couple of the cabins, static caravans or whatever they are around where we are staying. But it must have made such a difference for OSM Netherlands to have that open data. Something we can still only dream about in Ireland, but it goes to show that there is always work in catching up to do.

Location: Zuuk, Epe, Gelderland, Netherlands, 8161 RE, Netherlands

Mapping Indianola, Iowa 2

Posted by b-unicycling on 31 December 2024 in English. Last updated on 1 January 2025.

As I wrote some time ago, I started mapping (remotely) in Indianola, Iowa. I have now reached completion (as complete as it can be with the imagery available) with buildings and added more street furniture, minor highways etc.

In total, I added or modified 6,428 buildings. Indianola buildings

The number of trees added by myself has gone up to 1,185. Indianola trees

Thanks to the two mapillary sequences by Hopen111 (THANKS!) of the same road (North and South Jefferson), I was able to add building levels and quite a bit of street furniture (some of which is also visible on Bing, of course), such as

  • street lamps (177 along that road) (check out on streetlights map)
  • fire hydrants (19)
  • speed limit signs and speed limit on road (8)
  • manholes (27) - I’ve never added so many manholes to any settlement in my life, I think
  • street cabinets (27)

Indianola hydrants

I’ve also added 16 sports pitches and 20 flowerbeds which mostly came from Bing imagery.

In a college town like Indianola (and you don’t have to study geography!), I’d like to see more street-level imagery collected. It would also be good to map defibrillators, if there are public AEDs in Indianola. In the whole of Iowa, there are only 3 AEDs mapped (in Burlington), and there 200 fewer AEDs mapped in the whole of the US than in Ireland (openaedmap.org) which is worrying considering the demographic at risk…

I was an interesting challenge; the grid like streets made it quite easy to be efficient about it - even though I might have still missed some spots.

EDIT: Oops, forgot to add the f4map link: https://demo.f4map.com/#lat=41.3635365&lon=-93.5621150&zoom=16&camera.phi=0.573

Location: Indianola, Warren County, Iowa, 50125, United States

Mapping Indianola, Iowa

Posted by b-unicycling on 11 December 2024 in English. Last updated on 1 January 2025.

So, about 6 weeks ago, I met someone who teaches at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa at a conference here in Ireland. This made me curious about Indianola, and I went to check it out on OSM. Anything could trigger that in me.

I found the campus fairly well mapped with most of the buildings and most of the highway=sidewalk and some trees mapped, but there was more to be done. So, I started off easy with some footpaths, trees and missing buildings, but then I got competitive and wanted to see how long it would take be to get into the list of mappers for the US of A in the OSM stats.

That took me much longer than expected, because I’m used to get onto those lists fairly easy having mapped in much smaller countries with far fewer active mappers. But after about two weeks (I don’t remember exactly), I was in the Top 500. Yee-haw!

As of this morning, I was #160 which is not so bad, considering I “had to” hold my #1 in Ireland and stay in the Top 20 in the UK.

I ended up mapping just over 5,000 buildings. I had gotten tired of it and wanted to quit, but I thought I should at least reach the 5,000. map of Indianola, IA

I also mapped a couple of (well, 775) trees. I was actually surprised how many trees there were and how many seemingly mature ones at that.

I hadn’t mapped (much) in the USA before, but what struck me most was probably the number of church buildings, partly because that conference which started it had to do with religion and religious persecution. Some of their locations need to be fixed, by the way. I found nodes for churches in the middle of nowhere which need to be moved to the actual building.

But now I’m kinda tired of grid like street systems and will again focus solely on the Emerald Isle.

Location: Indianola, Warren County, Iowa, 50125, United States

spot the difference

Posted by b-unicycling on 17 October 2024 in English.

I came across an article with a map in our local newspaper yesterday via a Facebook post, and at once, I thought “Oh, this map looks very much based on OSM”. This map had been published by the local County Council and had no attribution (to any map provider). So before sending a strongly worded email (because it’s not the first time they used OSM data without attribution), I played a game of spot the difference comparing the published map with OSM and the Táilte Éireann (government agency) data. Here are just four things I found: map of Kilkenny

Their map data is from before July 8th 2023 which is when I changed the name of a road according to new signage, but they still have the old name on their map.

I think it’s very interesting that the local government continues to choose OSM over the government provided data (not sure whether it’s a financial issue or a data quality issue), but it would be very decent of them if they attributed correctly.

Having a lot of detail on OSM really helps catching them out, but I’m torn between pride and anger.

Council’s pdf document, see page 7 for map: click here, if you want to play.

oral history project

Posted by b-unicycling on 15 September 2024 in English.

Since the beginning of June, I have been working on researching and locating the holy wells of County Kilkenny. I have more or less identified about 213 of them which are described in sources going back at least 90 years (Schools’ Collection etc). In some cases, it is very difficult to locate them, because their location was only given as “in such and such a townland in that person’s field”, and it is very difficult to find out who owned a field 90 years ago.

In addition to that, I have more recently started an oral history project collecting people’s memories and stories about holy wells, patterns (which is a type of originally religious festival in Ireland where people do or did things in a certain pattern around a sacred site usually on the patron saint’s feast day) and other related things. I’m uploading them to Wikimedia and add transcripts, if you’re interested: Category:Oral history about holy wells in County Kilkenny.

What has that to do with mapping, you may ask. Well, apart from locating these holy wells and holy well sites which are protected monuments (and sometimes still water sources), I’m getting local place names from my interviewees as well. Names of roads, cross roads, field names etc which are also not recorded on any map yet, but are frequently still used by locals or were used in the past, so recording them now will help locate things referred to in older sources. Some of these, like Bóthar Chiaráin (Kieran’s Road after St Kieran) potentially go back 1300 years or so.

Bóthar Chiaráin

I’m also learning about the interesting etymology of house names like “The Awk” (or The Awg, not sure).

Location: Ballycallan, The Municipal District of Castlecomer, County Kilkenny, Leinster, Ireland

Ministerial blessing

Posted by b-unicycling on 21 August 2024 in English.

No, not that kind of a minister!

Anyways, at the moment, Heritage Week is on in Ireland, and I gave a talk on Monday in our new library building (on OSM) about “Citizen Science and Linked OpenData” using mostly my holy well survey as an example, but a bit the Ogham Project as well. I used one of the toilets in the library to explain how the general tagging works, because it is quite nano mapped and relatable.

The Minister for Heritage (and other things) was present and kindly posted on Facebook about it afterwards: https://www.facebook.com/MinisterMalcolmNoonan/posts/pfbid09t7ubGw1CgEN6vNZeUqTGFngepAsKsARzxiJbinr6siLtn9ovPuXdEA46spxdW8xl

Just for context, in the first photo, he’s the guy in the middle, and the elderly people are descendants of Hubert Butler (on wikipedia), they were the other VIP guests so to speak.

It’s a busy week for him, so I was pretty happy that he attended and promoted OSMin his post. (Even though we still have to work on the spelling, but at least he didn’t use the plural like so many other people.)

I talked about the Wikiverse as well, of course. Wikimedia Ireland dedicated a blog post to it beforehand as advertisement for the talk. Thanks very much for that as well!

The last couple of days, I’ve been diving into a very sad chapter of Irish history - “industrial schools” which were children’s homes with less than favourable conditions for some of the children.

It stumbled into that rabbit hole, because a friend who went on a spin with me (I don’t drive myself, but I like being dependent on other people that way, because I always learn something from them that I wouldn’t have, if I drove myself) to look for holy wells had mentioned in passing a boys’ cemetery/ burial ground at St. Patrick’s Industrial School near Kilkenny. This school closed at some point after 1965 and the boys were transferred to St. Joseph’s Industrial School within Kilkenny city. St. Joseph’s had been only for girls until then.

I contacted our heritage officer at the local county council trying to find out whether they knew anything about this cemetery (I’m gonna stick with the OSM terminology from now on), but they had no record of it. It was also not marked on the official maps by Ordnance Survey Ireland (or the historical Ordnance Survey maps conducted by the UK government before Ireland’s independence).

Another friend who knew of the location offered to drive out with me and show me. So we went and I took photographs of all the grave markers (Category on Wikimedia), did a bit of mapillary and mapped the area as best I could (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1298817559) 68 boys and one woman (as I found out later, a matron in her 80s) were recorded as having been buried there. I did a little more research on them which you can read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_names_recorded_at_St_Patrick%27s_Industrial_School_Cemetery,_Kilkenny

When we left, my “driver” mentioned that the nuns who ran the establishment (I hesitate to call it a school) also had a cemetery there, but we were pressed for time, so we didn’t visit it that day.

The next day, I cycled out and found the nuns’ cemetery which I also photographed and mapped as a cemetery.

It then got me thinking that there should be one at St. Joseph’s, but the heritage officer had informed me, again, that there was no record of a cemetery there. Having seen two (unrecorded ones) at St. Patrick’s, I wasn’t deterred and went looking for one at St. Joseph’s. Part of the land had been sold and new walls been built since it closed down as the Industrial School, but I found a cross on top of a blocked up entrance.

I had to leave the property and walk around to get access to the other side. That area had once belonged to St. Joseph’s, I believe, but is now used by SOS as a facility for disabled people. I spotted a newish looking gate and peered through - and I saw grave markers. I had found the nuns’ cemetery. Again, I mapped it and photographed all the grave markers for upload to Wikimedia. This cemetery was actually recorded on the Ordnance Survey map, but was not known to the County Council.

I’m fairly convinced that there are girls buried there somewhere, but I was not able to find any proof of it. Sadly, Ireland has a long history of not recording the graves of people they didn’t deem worthy. If you feel very strong and have a high tolerance level, you might want to search online for “Tuam babies”. There is also quite a bit to be found online about abuse scandals at St. Joseph’s, but it is certainly not light reading.

I’m afraid there are hundreds of cemeteries like that where institutionalized people were buried without proper records. Paupers, babies, children, unwed mothers, possibly also people with mental or physical disabilities. Local people sometimes know about these, and I think the least we can do is record them on OSM and let the local authorities know, so that they can update their records.

However, sometimes even the locals don’t know about them. A friend of mine went to St. Patrick’s Industrial School until the age of 12 and said that they never knew about the cemetery there. If a boy vanished, they were told they had gone “on holidays” or “home”. Considering how long ago these establishments closed down, the people who actually buried the children are probably no longer alive to ask.

There was also a “Historic Town’s Atlas” researched by a well renowned local historian (John Bradley Wikipedia) and published by the Royal Irish Academy (check it out here) which does not make mention of any of these cemeteries. I wonder if he was a bit biased towards Kilkenny’s medieval history. I mean, I get it, I’d rather research medieval things that are too long ago to get upset about, but history is history and needs to be recorded.

I will continue to record these on OSM wherever I find them, but for my own mental health, I think I won’t go any deeper than that.

Location: Reviewfields, Kilkenny Rural, The Municipal District of Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny, Leinster, Ireland

Digital Humanities Conference UCC June 4th/5th 2024

Posted by b-unicycling on 9 June 2024 in English. Last updated on 10 June 2024.

Last week, I attended the Digital Humanities Conference at University College Cork in Ireland for two days. I had been asked to give a talk about mapping ogham stones on OpenStreetMap as part of a panel which spoke about ogham stones and open and linked data. The other three speakers (Nora White, Megan Kasten and Florian Thiery) are all working at universities, as were most of the other speakers, so I felt a bit like an imposter.

However, it was a good chance to speak about OpenStreetMap to people who can spread the word amongst students.

AFAIK, the talks were not recorded, but I recorded my audio on the phone and made it into a YouTube-Video some days later which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/n6CM7Cq1iFM

It was also a good opportunity to meet other mappers (such as above mentioned Florian as well as Shawn Day who teaches at UCC), both of whom I had never met offline.

We mapped all the ogham stones at UCC and did photogrammetry of all of them which will be available on SketchFab (and other platforms?) soon. Maybe Florian can comment below with links to “his” stones and the slides from the other panellists.

Ogham stone UCC 17

The GoPro had come with me, so there is now a bit more 360° imagery available from the UCC Campus - or will be soon anyway: https://www.mapillary.com/app/user/annekaro?lat=51.893481653856384&lng=-8.49054352811072&z=16.770354738185528&panos=true&focus=map&x=0.01133632233359827&y=0.5713978357700417&zoom=0

and Panoramax; https://panoramax.openstreetmap.fr/#background=streets&focus=map&map=16.89/51.893504/-8.490404&speed=250 !

Location: Gillabbey, Gillabbey C, Cork, County Cork, Munster, Ireland

Don’t worry, I won’t write a report every week!

So, the second week of capturing imagery with the GoPro Max granted by Meta is over. I’ve uploaded around 30,000 images since I started, but I’m not quite sure how many.

Here’s a little animation of my progress. It certainly helps me to stay motivated, if I can visualize my progress:

I still have only used it cycling and walking, but I had an ebike at my disposal on Easter Monday which was great for two reasons: The streets weren’t as busy because of the holiday, and I could obviously cover more ground. This was the only day so far that the camera battery ran out of energy before me. I might borrow it again to venture out further into the country.

I used the camera on the public bus as well, but obviously couldn’t use the 360 deg function, but instead just held it against the bus window from the inside. Not ideal, but I got some coverage of roads that had not been covered on Mapillary before at all. (Those do not appear in the animation, because I filtered for 360 imagery.)

It seems that Mapillary deals with the images a bit faster than during the first couple of days; usually they are fully processed after about two days now.

Interview on local radio

Yesterday, I gave a wee interview on one of our local radio stations about the project. I had hoped to inform the public about it that way, so that I don’t get as many looks of bewilderment, but I’m not sure that very many people listen to that radio station. If you’re interested, this is the link, and it starts around 47:59. It’s a bit of a pity I discovered that holy well, because it took valuable time off the interview which could have been used to address issues about privacy or whatever. However, I had suggested mentioning the holy well to him before the interview in the hope of finding out more about it, but then I found it out between that and the interview, but he liked the local history angle, I guess, so we stuck with it.

Panoramax

I’ve also started uploading some of the images to Panoramax, more as a test than anything, because we don’t have our own Irish instance of it yet. The uploading works like a charm, only it doesn’t show a map in the background: Panoramax screenshot

There’s a storm warning in place until tomorrow evening, so I don’t know if I will be able to keep up my streak, especially since I have to cycle further to even start capturing now.

Week 1 of EU Camera Grant Project (camera #3)

Posted by b-unicycling on 29 March 2024 in English. Last updated on 7 April 2024.

I was lucky enough (or maybe deserving) to have been granted one of the GoPro Maxes sponsored by Meta, a project organised by OSM Belgium - many thanks for that!

I’ve had it for a week now, and I’ve been very busy with it - around 12.643 images captured so far (some nearly duplicates I deleted and some without GPS data I didn’t bother adding it to). I don’t drive, so I only went about on my bike and on foot - so far, but I would like to try it on a car roof at some point.

My first stop was St. Mullin’s in Co. Carlow, a small village, but more importantly early Christian monastic site and National Monument. There is a relatively new bus route (887 Local Link) going there which hadn’t been mapped yet, so I took the bus from Carlow to St. Mullin’s to track the route and bus stops. The bus driver was kind enough to tell me where the bus stops were, because for most of them, they are not signposted. (Trace 1 and Trace 2, if anyone is interested, but the routes are mapped so far) Mapillary shot of bus at Carlow Train Station at unsigned bus stop

Anyways, I walked around St. Mullin’s (named after Saint Moling) and also to the holy well with a selfie stick which was included in the camera package. It looked quite different to last time I visited; the holy well is tidied up and the area around it is a tiny campsite now. Which I have diligently added to OSM, of course. Screenshot St. Mullin's on Mapillary You can see the comparison of what was there already and what I added. The bus came in from the North, so it’s a damn shame I couldn’t capture the bus route.

I also discovered a village pump and a public bookcase which I added and will use in a future video, hopefully. The pump, that is.

The rest of the footage is from Kilkenny (city, as the locals like to call it). Screenshot Mapillary Kilkenny Area covered within the first week, not all of it is available on mapillary yet.

I checked against GoogleStreetView coverage, and I already have a better coverage than they within the area I have surveyed. They’ve left out whole little housing estates and streets. And of course, they rarely cover parks. There seems to have been someone in Kilkenny who did a few footpath shortcuts and parks, but the image quality is not great - portrait format.

Equipment and Usage

The camera came with the “invisible selfie-stick” which you might have come across on Amazon (I know I have), several clips to attach it to the helmet, a helmet strap (of which I already had two for the previous camera, the LG360), a spare battery etc.

I used the selfie stick on the first outing, but since then, I’ve basically only used it on the helmet. I might look silly walking around with it, but I couldn’t care less. I try to have the selfie stick (and I tripod I already owned before) with me at all times, in case I need to take a picture in a shop (with no people in the image) or of a holy well or whatever.

I’m also using the GoPro Quik app to remotely control the camera which might result in quicker battery death, but I find it handy while cycling to stop the capturing sequence, when I’m waiting at a junction for longer or waiting for the bin collection lorry to pass or when I’m cycling along a street I have already captured. It saves me from deleting those images manually.

I’ve used the camera for other purposes as well, like shooting video sequences for upcoming YouTube tutorials - the built-in stabilizer is a revelation compared to my phone shots before. The microphone isn’t too bad either.

Only today, I decided to set the timer to 5sec when walking which leaves me with roughly the same distance between images as there is for 2sec and cycling.

Technical hick-ups

  1. Irish weather and weather forecast: The weather is very changeable and unpredictable at the moment, so there is no point in planning anything for the next day. Whenever the rain stops, I’m out on the bike. The weather forecast might say that it might rain all day, but then I could end up with 4 hours of almost continuous sunshine. Almost.
  2. GPS not being recorded: This happens only during the first sequence of the day, even if I wait a little. But I can adjust it using Geosetter, even though that likes to crash, when I’m not very patient. It also happens in building passages and other tunnels, of course, but they’re usually not that long, so I can add or adjust coordinates as well.

Observations

People seem to like parking in what we have mapped as turning circles. Really annoying, because I can’t go to the very end of the street, and I can’t turn easily. People also don’t give a damn about leaving access for bicycles, wheelchairs and other non-pedestrians when parking their cars.

Avoid surveying churchyards on Good Friday. At least I captured that part of Irish culture, I guess.

Beyond the scope

I’ve taken some pics inside businesses where I know the business owner and have asked them, if they are okay with it. I’ve offered to send them the images as well, so they can use them on Facebook or whatever. I will continue doing that, especially in the pubs I play music in, because it just came up with our band how useful it is to have images from inside pubs to give you an idea about the venue. Google StreetView have done that in some pubs already.

If you want to follow my progress, this mapillary link should work until 30 April; you’ll have to adjust the date after that.

Publicity

I try to wear by “SURVEYOR” high viz, so at least people can see that I’m a geek with a mission. If they can read it. Some have read “survivor” in the past, which until that point in time is true as well.

I’m also hoping to go on the local radio to talk about the project, so that people might not look at me in too much bewilderment, when they see me with the camera on top of the helmet. Sometimes people wave or stop and smile, but so far, that always happened, when I wasn’t actually capturing.

Week 2

another report on OSM Ireland website

rag trees/ cootie trees mapping

Posted by b-unicycling on 7 March 2024 in English.

(All images via WikimediaCommons)

So, I went on a little outing with a friend to look at some historic/ folkloristic sites that I hadn’t been to before. One of them was an old monastic site where there is still a working church with a holy well (place_of_worship=holy_well) and high cross (historic=high_cross) nearby. When we went to the holy well/ high cross site, I was delighted to see that the site also had a rag tree which hadn’t been recorded on the government’s Historic Environment Viewer. rag tree at St Laserian's Well Now, there could be several reasons for that which I won’t go into, but it reminded me that rag trees were something I had wanted to map, but of course, there was no tagging scheme.

I had mapped some previously using just natural=tree with various other tags, but I thought I needed a tagging scheme that was applicable to other countries and cultures as well.

To explain what a rag tree is (very simplified version): In the Celtic tradition (apparently, but some of these customs go back to the Neolithic), they were often found near a sacred well, and if you had an affliction, lets say sore eyes, you would take a piece of cloth, dip it in the sacred/ holy water, clean your eyes with it or at least rub the afflicted area of your body and tie the rag/ piece of cloth to the tree/ bush. As soon as that piece of fabric had rotted away, your ailment would be gone as well. Needless to say that this only “works” with organic fabrics, not synthetics. This is a process called a votive offering whereas you transfer the ailment onto a place holder (piece of cloth, but in antiquity, could also be a wax model of the afflicted body part - a little bit like voodoo) and leave that at a sacred/ holy/ magic place, so that God/ the Gods/ spirits can take care of your ailment by proxy, so to say. There are also (according what I only read on Wikipedia) “ex-voto” places of worship where you leave a symbol for your ailment behind after you have been healed or saved. There are many crutches left at Lourdes, for example. In the Middle Ages, people would apparently carve ships into church walls after being saved from a shipwreck etc. (That there might be graffiti of ships for other reasons is another matter…) Another weird fact relating to that: People in antiquity and the Middle Ages believed that the womb was like a toad wandering in the body of a woman (something to do with hysterics; I won’t go there now), so whenever they had “women’s trouble”, the votive offering would take the shape of a toad.

So, I pretty quickly settled on the key place of worship, because there is a ritualistic element to the custom which is still very much in use in Ireland, at least. There are also, as someone already pointed out in the Irish Telegram group, similar traditions like wassailing in England which result in decorated trees.

In my opinion, there are also traces of that tradition in the Grimm Brothers fairy tale “Cinderella” which I might go into when I do a video about the topic. ;-) DBP 1965 486 Wohlfahrt Aschenputtel.jpg

I had mapped the Irish examples I had seen and photographed and some I found on Wikimedia was place_of_worship=rag_tree, but I decided to change that to place_of_worship=sacred_tree to cover more religions and cultures. There are several trees tagged as “sacred” in some way or other already on OSM, according to taginfo: https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/search?q=sacred+tree#values

I’m suggesting on the wiki to use sacred_tree=rag_tree for those in Ireland and the clootie/ cloutie/ cloughtie trees in Scotland to avoid the several spellings in Scotland. Some might also be known as “fairy tree”, but be careful about tagging those; reasons are explained on the Wiki.

I only retagged the Irish examples today, so the infobox still says “This tag does not appear in the OSM database.”, but there are actually a few.

Location: Oldleighlin, Old Leighlin ED, The Municipal District of Muinebeag, County Carlow, Leinster, Ireland

Today, I got an email from my local conservation officer at the county council (whom I had briefly worked for in 2022, so he knows about my OSM activity) asking me whether there were any lime kilns mapped in County Kilkenny, because the government database didn’t have much to offer. And of course, there are some mapped; I made a video about it in 2021. So I sent him the overpass-turbo query.

I checked the government database which showed 4 lime kilns for that area; OSM had 20 (but I actually added another one that I had previously forgotten about).

When I was home and had access to a proper PC, I also built him a search for field names referring to lime kilns which can be “Kill Field” and “Kiln Field”, because that might hint at some more lime kilns. map of locations of lime kilns in Co. Kilkenny

Nice to know that all the effort of the last couple of years are paying off (if only metaphorically).

Pondering ponds in Latvia

Posted by b-unicycling on 11 February 2024 in English.

Several times when I have added milk churns stands to the map in Latvia, I have noticed ponds in the vicinity of farms. For a while, not knowing much about Latvian culture, I thought they were for keeping fish for a balanced diet.

But today, after having added two more MCS, I decided to ask my trusted Latvian on Instagram, the lady who has the account which features Latvian milk churn stands. She explained that rural farms often still have a sauna and that people also like ice water bathing, so it’s convenient to have your own pond on the farm. The little sauna hut (not mapped much in Latvia, but in Finland as building=sauna, building:use=sauna and building=sauna_hut) is often surrounded by trees and a bit away from the farm house in case of fire.

I had added a few ponds here and there, but I’m delighted to see how many are already mapped in Latvia - over 14,000!

Every day is a school day.

I reminded her of #WikiLovesFolklore which is running this month and which could do with some photographs of Latvian milk churn stands and saunas.

Location: Roņi, Benislova, Lazdukalna pagasts, Balvu novads, LV-4577, Latvia

Mapping in Malta

Posted by b-unicycling on 10 February 2024 in English.

I’m just back from a holiday in Malta where I obviously mapped a lot. I made it to #3 in number of changesets in the country which was not terribly difficult.

Something went wrong with my SIM card as soon as I landed, so I had no mobile internet, but I had downloaded Malta on OSMAnd beforehand, so I was good. And there is free wifi on public transport which I availed of excessively.

I added and modified all kinds of things: post boxes (also updated collection times which seems to have changed generally on the island of Malta to Mo-Sa 7:00), defibrillators, ferry terminals, shops, museums, bus stops, charging points, and because it’s me, jostle stones, urine deflectors and drawbar slots. In Mdina, I could actually see the jostle stones in action! I was so excited, I made a little Short for Youtube, but that corner didn’t have a guard stone, but was chamfered and had a metal protector: YouTube Link

Looking at neis-one for Malta and looking up some of the mappers, it seems that Malta is mostly mapped by tourists and these days. You can tell (at least it was my impression) that by what is mapped as well: Areas that are frequented by tourists are mapped much better (I added some post boxes that I spotted from the bus going through areas where tourists don’t get off the bus). Things that are of interest to tourists are mapped, like museums, hotels, bars, beaches and shops whose brands are known globally.

Even before I had set off, I had noticed many hiking trails mapped. I only tried out one heritage trail, and found it poorly signposted. If I hadn’t had the route marked out on OSMAnd, I wouldn’t have known where to go, I think. I noticed some bits missing in the relation and contacted the original mapper who turned out also to be a German tourist. I added some of the other features along the trail. I don’t know who mapped the other trails; I had initially thought that maybe the tourism department of Malta had done it, but I haven’t looked into it.

I also tried to map as many information boards as possibly, but I got a bit lazy in adding all the inscriptions, but I also mapillaried most of them or photographed them for Wikimedia, so if anyone fancies adding more information, they could do that. In some locations like the Ta’ Kola Windmill, I even went as far as to map the indoor corridors. I also went a bit mad in the Ġgantija Neolithic Temple with the information boards.

The bus network seems perfectly mapped, apart from some bus stops maybe being a few meters off the actual location, but not so far that you couldn’t see the bus stop from its mapped location. That was very helpful too.

I found it interesting to see how dedicated tourists made such a difference to the map of Malta. It’s maybe also more likely that certain features will get updated on a regular basis, because a visitor might find that a shop has closed or a feature has moved etc rather than a local going on a survey ever so often to check if anything has changed. And it will be mostly the tourists using the map, because the locals know where their next post box is etc.

More archaeological discoveries

Posted by b-unicycling on 30 January 2024 in English.

Stone Circle in Co. Galway

Yesterday, I got an email from the National Monuments Service (Republic of Ireland) to confirm a stone circle I had discovered in December of 2022 and reported to them as a potential site. I discovered it in Co. Galway while mapping the Co. Roscommon task (which still needs validation, btw), but the site is just across the River Suck (that’s what it’s called on OSM; it has a different name on Google, strangely) which forms the boundary between Roscommon and Galway.

Check on OpenStreetMap

I nearly didn’t report it, because it looks so neat and regular with its 27 (thanks danieldegroot2 for being able to count, not like myself :D) stones forming a perfect circle of 18m diameter. It’s not difficult to make perfect circle, but the distance between the stones looks very regular too. Hence my doubtful subject in my email to the NMS “unlikely monument in Co. Galway, only reporting just in case”, because I suspected that the farmer whose land is on (or his forefathers) had built it. I still have a little doubt. It’s also in a flood plain which seems a strange location for a stone circle to me, but I’m no expert. The stone in the centre is a standing stone, but the ones forming the circle are “only” boulders which is not entirely unusual, as attested by the more famous Kenmare Stone Circle in Co. Kerry (website, on OSM). I presume they used boulders formed partly be the ice age and partly by the River Suck. The standing stone is not as smooth as the boulders. Unfortunately, I have no photographs, because I have not visited the site myself, but the lady from the NMS sent me two photographs.

It can’t happen often that hitherto unknown (apart from the farmer who owns the land, of course) stone circles are recorded. The NSM archaeologist also commented on the strange fact that they were not recorded on the Ordnance Survey maps. I presume (from reading some of the Ordnance Survey letters) that the 19th century Ordnance Surveyors did not actually look at every square meter of Ireland, but asked the local priest or other person of authority if they knew of anything significant in the area, and if they asked the wrong person (ignorant of suspicious of the surveyors), they just weren’t told. Now, of course, we have aerial imagery and could probably even teach AI to look for sites (but what’s the fun in that?).

Crannógs in Co. Monaghan

From Dec 19th 2023 to January 22nd 2024, I had mapped the buildings in Co. Monaghan in a private task in the task manager (report on the OSM Ireland website). I chose to create a private task, because I wanted to look for unrecorded archaeological sites as a side quests (I like my side quests; they keep me motivated). As a result, I reported 8 possible crannógs (lake dwellings, Wikipedia) to the National Monuments Service a week ago. Today, I got an email from them confirming 4. Because they responded so quickly, I presume that they also only looked at satellite imagery (maybe they have access to Lidar as well, idk) and didn’t visit the sites. Three of them are in lakes and one in a bog:

  • Lough Glear (already recorded on the Ordnance Survey maps as an islet, but not identified as a crannóg before): OSM link Bing imagery 7/17/2021-7/21/2021
  • Drumate Lough: OSM link Bing imagery 7/17/2021-7/21/2021
  • Laurel Lough: OSM link Bing imagery 7/17/2021-7/21/2021
  • Cor Bog: OSM link Bing imagery 1/29/2014-10/4/2019

I worked mostly with Bing imagery, but compared it with other aerial imagery, too, of course. I’m sorry for not posting screen shots of the aerial imagery, but I’m not quite sure what the copyright status is, when using it in the diaries. (I’ve done it before, but I don’t want to stretch my luck.)

The really cool thing for my dear reader and co-contributor is the fact that the National Monuments Service’s map is basically offline, well, they can’t add new sites at the moment, so the only map where this information is available for now is OpenStreetMap. #silverlining

If anyone likes numbers, that’s 16 crannógs I have officially discovered so far since October 2022. And one stone circle. :D

Thanks, OSM, for making that possible! It’s a joy!

EDIT: I have added a section “how to spot on aerial imagery” to the wiki which might be useful to others and contains images.

pound vs pinfold

Posted by b-unicycling on 17 January 2024 in English. Last updated on 29 January 2024.

In addition to the previous diary post, I want to quickly show why I think that historic=pinfold should be deprecated.

When I started mapping historic pounds with historic=pound, it was pointed out to me that the value I should use was in fact “pinfold”. I had only ever seen “Pound” on old maps, so I presumed that that was the standard word used by cartographers, but I did my due diligence to find out.

Collins Dictionary differentiates by animal kept in the enclosure: “pound” for dogs and cats and “pinfold” for cattle and sheep. No room for pigs, geese, goats and donkeys. I had my suspicion that that was not a very precise definition.

I sent an email to Historic England, because they use both terms in their database; I’m still waiting for the verdict. (Edit 2024-01-29: Their reply email said that they were two words used for the same concept. I don’t find that very helpful. They sent a list of all their pounds and pinfolds, but I didn’t want to look into the copyright license issue, so I ignored that. If anyone is interested, I can forward the list.)

While I was waiting, I searched for “animal pound”, “village pound” and “pinfold” on Wikimedia and, after comparing the GPS provided there with what was visible on aerial imagery and sometimes streetview imagery (rarely, because they are mostly found in villages with no streetview coverage), added them using historic=pound for the ones where the file name and description contained “pound” and historic=pound + pound=pinfold to the ones that were called “pinfold” on Wikimedia. This enabled me to create a distribution map for both terms. (There were also “pounds” in Wales, but I left them out for this search.) The “pinfold” cases were mostly confirmed by the Historic England database which I consulted to add HE_ref to the ones already found on Wikimedia. Some Wikimedia entries also had the number already provided.

(There are possibly another >160 unmapped pounds, bc Historic England alone has 268 listed, and some of the ones on Wikimedia are not listed buildings.)

I could have saved myself a lot of work by just searching for place names such as streets, roads and junctions named after the location of the pound/ pinfold. I don’t know what the chances are of a street being named after the currency or a car pound, but the results again show a regional distribution:

After this, I am very convinced that the difference is one in dialect and not in function.

I also searched for pubs and restaurants containing either term, but there were too few results to make any judgement; there was one containing “Pinfold” and about 5 containing “Pound”.

Good to see that OSM can be used for some quick linguistic research.

Geo-detecting for village pounds

Posted by b-unicycling on 14 January 2024 in English. Last updated on 15 January 2024.

In preparation for an upcoming video, I fell into another rabbit hole, this time about village pounds/ animal pounds, whatever you want to call them. I won’t go into the tagging scheme which I came up with, but which is recorded on the wiki.

It was fairly easy in England and Wales, where plenty of photographs on Wikimedia with coordinates were provided. The coordinates weren’t always 100% correct, but the well preserved structures are easy to spot on aerial imagery. Historic England and Cadw combined also have hundreds in their databases which I only consulted to get the reference numbers, not to import locations! The old Pound in Blundeston ~~~ The old Pound in Blundeston, Evelyn Simak / The old Pound in Blundeston ~~~

The situation in the Republic of Ireland is very different, very possibly also for historic reasons which I might go into in the video, but not here. I found 4 recorded as pre-1700 monuments and one as a post-1700 monument. I could find not a single photograph on Wikimedia.

I knew of two, one in Graiguenamanagh, now on Wikimedia, and one site in Borris in Carlow where I had once mapped the house numbers on Pound Lane. I later remembered the site in Maynooth which I had seen in person, but not photographed (tut, tut) and which is the one post-1700 recorded monument.

Two ore three field names were also already mapped which had “Pound” in their name, from what I could find.

Everyone in Ireland seems to call them “Pound”, so I started searching for that word in the Schools’ Collection on duchas.ie which is a collection of texts collected and written by Irish school children in the late 1930s. Luckily, there was a filter (which vanished the last day of my research) for “place lore” which filtered out most occurrences for “pound” in the meaning of “currency” and “weight measure”, reduced the number of results from 3,205 to 173 and left me with texts about mostly field names, road names and cross road names. The children usually gave the townland name of where these places were, BUT they are often spelled different or the location is actually not in that townland. It wouldn’t be detecting, if it was too easy now.

When the filter for “place lore” was working, it showed 173 results, so I filtered again by county and worked my way through those in a random order. I did not try to follow up on every field name, because that was fairly futile, but I compared most to the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map (late 1830s), 25inch map (early 1900s) and “last edition” (late 1930s (which I finally figured out by a school being mentioned to having opened on March 1st 1938, but it was not on that map)). When it was on the “last edition” map, I got my hopes up and checked the British war office map which is also OS, but we are allowed to use it. When I could find them there, only then could I add them to OpenStreetMap. There were not many, because … politics, probably. Search results on duchas.ie with place lore filter on map

To have some relaxation from this tedious search, I then used overpass turbo to search for highway=* AND name~Pound and followed that up on the same maps, again only adding the sites that were actually on the BWO map. We’ve been trying to get a waiver since at least 2019, by the way. This is of course only possible, where street names are mapped on OSM. I also did that for Northern Ireland. This step was only possible on OSM, as I’m sure you’re all aware of. There ended up being a few (5 maximum) overlaps between that and the Schools’ Collection results.

For some towns which I thought might have been market towns and which should have had a pound, I also searched all the maps and found a few. However, that was quite random, but a nice break from the Schools’ Collection.

Back to the Schools’ Collection, it turns out that “pound” in the most general sense seemed to mean “animal enclosure” in Ireland. That was the original Old English/ Old Saxon meaning of the word, according to Wikipedia. But sometimes the meaning was more specific (“high walled/fenced enclosure for cattle over night before being driven to the Fair the next day”, for example). They were not necessarily “communal” spaces like in England. Pinfold_in_Hutton-le-Hole ~~~ Pinfold in Hutton-le-Hole, North Yorkshire, GhostInTheMachine, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Very similar looking to a cashel ~~~

A friend sent me information about a cashel in Kerry, for example which was apparently used as a pound. From some of the texts from the West of Ireland, it seemed that cashels were often associated with pounds. I might have even discovered an unrecorded one in Cashelgay, Donegal which I have since reported to the National Monuments Service (despite its name, there was no cashel recorded there yet). Loher Stone Fort ~~ Loher Stone Fort in Kerry, Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The small circular enclosure is the alleged pound ~~~~

I didn’t search the Irish texts in the Schools’ Collection, because I can’t. The word seems to be “póna”, but in the Wesht of Ireland it’s “púna”, because I found a couple of placenames with the genitive “phúnta”.

Aaanyway, this took me three of four days. Just before I started searching the Schools’ Collection for Co. Cork which had shown me 34 results, the most of all counties, the filter disappeared and I was shown over 315 instead! Argh! I made it through, and found a lot of potential candidates there. I made a list of all potential sites, unfortunately in a *.txt document, so I’m not sure how many there are. The ones I had located on old OS maps or through local knowledge, I put in a spreadsheet, and they add up to 95. At least 5 of them are part of a local heritage trail, none of those are recorded monuments.

I’ve also added name:etymology and name:etymology:wikidata to the streets, cross roads and townland names I could match up.

Wherever I could identify the location from the schools’ collection, I added old_name to the roads, because I don’t know if they are still in use.

Oh, I see the “place lore” filter is back. Great.

Re-mapping Co. Kilkenny

Posted by b-unicycling on 26 December 2023 in English. Last updated on 29 December 2023.

The 30th of November saw the 4-year anniversary of the #osmIRL_buildings project, an ambitious project of the Irish OSM community to map all the buildings on the island. Co. Kilkenny had been the first project to be finished in the task manager in April of 2020, and I thought that it was high time to look at it again.

Since I live in that county, I had noticed missing buildings once in a while being on the road or mapping other things remotely. Relatively new (summer 2022) aerial imagery had been made available by Esri World which wasn’t as clear as Bing, but more recent.

So I decided to make a private task in the task manager and update the whole county by myself. I like to have side quests to make it more interesting, so I decided to also look for unrecorded archaeological sites. The summer of 2022 had been very dry, so crop marks would be more visible on the Esri World imagery. I wanted a private task, so nobody would map any of the tiles, and I might miss something. I usually map the bulk of the other tasks anyway, but I did not want to take any chances. This was going to be the most thorough search for crop marks and other clues to archaeological sites Kilkenny had ever seen. Or so I believe.

All in all, it took me 11 days or 75.5 hours (average time per task multiplied by tasks), but I had excluded Kilkenny city, because I usually have an eye on that all the time.

Discovering sites sometimes slows me down, because I have to at least make a note or even write the report straight away. project timeline

Buildings mapped

Note: When we started the buildings project, the objective was only to get the buildings on the map, there was no objective to map building types which we have since decided to do. So, there was a lot of re-tagging involved. (Big thanks to jonnymccullagh and his JOSM colour scheme for buildings!)

building type number 2023-11-26 number 2023-12-09
  85K 88 k
yes 46.6 25.6
house 26K 35.3K
semidetached_house 652 1.1K
detached 59 79
farm_auxiliary 2.5K 13.9K
barn 297 295
terrace 227 221
apartments 132 150
retail 399 465
commercial 344 398
industrial 383 424
school 177[^1] 194
church 113 114
hospital 56 55
public 42 51
library 1[^2] 1
ruins 649 763
demolished:building 141 699

[^1] These are not necessarily all still in use as schools, but I had mapped all school buildings previously for #WikiLovesMonuments. [^2] There is definitely more than one library in Co. Kilkenny!

It’s clear to see that there aren’t just buildings being built, but also demolished.

Highways and waterways

key length in km 2023-11-26 length in km 2023-12-09
highway 6410 6607
waterway 1050 1061

Archaeological finds

In total, I sent 10 reports about 12 sites to the National Monuments Service. The first two have been confirmed; then I stopped receiving replies. I don’t know what that means. Almost all of them were circular crop marks, some were less circular and more towards rectangular. Before you ask in the comments what I think they are: I don’t know, neither will the record in the NMS tell you much more than “enclosure”, I would presume.

Here is a screenshot of Esri World of the two that have been confirmed: Esri World screenshot of two crop marks And the same two on Bing: Bing screenshot of two crop marks

I took that inspiration and made another video about how to report potential monuments to the National Monuments Service. You will see more examples from that little project in the video: YouTube link

I was quite happy to use the excuse of mapping buildings to utilize the grid system of the task manager to systematically look for crop marks. Almost all the sites were in the Northern half of Kilkenny, which was quite frustrating, as I worked my way South. The last (quite controversial site), I discovered in the last 15 mins, I think. As you can see from the numbers, though, it paid off to use the grid search. Now I have to wait to hear back about the other ten sites…

Location: Coolnacrutta, Glashare, The Municipal District of Castlecomer, County Kilkenny, Leinster, Ireland

Fox Coverts

Posted by b-unicycling on 25 November 2023 in English.

Some weeks ago, and it might have coincided with the start of the hunting season on the 1st of November, I was asked by a member of our local historical society whether it would be possible to map all the fox coverts in County Kilkenny. The person who asked is the archivist for the historical society, and someone might have contacted her about the topic.

Around that time, I was working on mapping all the buildings in Co. Meath as part of OSM Ireland’s project to map all the buildings. I never just map buildings, but during that task, I had added quite a few fox coverts which I had seen on the British War Office map. I had used either name=Fox Covert or old_name=Fox Covert, depending on whether the area was still wooded on current imagery or not. I did not know anything about fox coverts, but I thought that these place names should be recorded. Fox Covert in Co.Meath on the British War office map

There are quite a few name=Fox Coverts mapped, mostly in the UK: overpass-turbo. The situation in the UK is however different from Ireland, because fox hunting has been made illegal in the UK, so there should be no need for fox coverts any longer.

To understand that, I should probably explain what a fox covert is: It is an area of natural wood or planted forest or gorse where foxes live. During the hunting season, they are disturbed from there and hunted, and either get away or get killed. But usually, humans do not go into the fox covert, and it is not a farmed area, so that apart from being a somewhat dangerous habitat for foxes, other wildlife flourishes there, such as smaller animals and rare plants.

Anyway, I came to the conclusion that the label “Fox Covert” wasn’t so much a name than a function, so I had to come up with a tagging scheme to map them not by name. I decided to go with leisure=fox_covert, since it is a sort of sport, and an area set aside and often made to serve that sport. I’ve documented the whole tagging scheme in the wiki.

Through the original query by the historical society, I heard about a map in their archive, made in 1896, showing all the then in use fox coverts in Co. Kilkenny (around 83) and the meets*. It is a printed map with the fox coverts marked greenish and the meets red. As a side node, it is a terrain map which also seems to show the parish boundaries (certainly not townland boundaries). (Photograph by myself, out of copyright map owned by Kilkenny Archaeological Society)

A printed legend on the right side matches the numbers with names of locations such as “Punchbowl Gorse” (my favourite) or “Bessborough Demesne”. I don’t think they are names of the fox coverts either, but names of townlands or similar. The full name would be “Bessborough Demesne Fox Covert”, I think.

*A meet is the meeting point where the hunters gather before the hunt starts, usually they were manor houses or sometimes inns in the country. (I haven’t actually looked at those in detail, because I’m not going to map them.)

I then sat down and tried to find these 83 locations using the British War office map and current aerial view. That limited the list to 14 which are still wooded or overgrown with gorse. I’m in communication with the North Kilkenny Hunt and the Kilkenny Hunt to find out which of these are actually still in use, because I don’t want to add leisure=fox_covert to ones that are no longer in use. I might use lifecycle prefixes, though.

Unfortunately, it is not known for what purpose that 1896 map was made or who donated it to Kilkenny Archaeological Society. These days, the hunters use Eircodes or drop GoogleMap pins to communicate their meets. At least that’s what it looked like on their Facebook page. Maybe the old map was used for similar purposes.

I’m currently working on a video about the mapping of those, but I still need a little more research to finish.