Proposal:Creamery

creamery
Proposal status:	Approved (active)
Proposed by:	B-unicycling
Tagging:	historic=creamery Data item
Applies to:	area
Definition:	A creamery is an industrial building where butter, cheese or ice-cream was made from milk.
Statistics:
Rendered as:
Draft started:	2021-09-18
RFC start:	2021-09-19
Vote start:	2021-10-14
Vote end:	2021-10-28

Proposal

It is proposed to create a tag for historic creameries which were found in rural areas with short transport ways for the dairy farmers. The combination of tags proposed is only meant to apply to historic creameries; a new tag for working creameries needs to be the topic of another proposal.

Rationale

This proposal is written from an Irish perspective, but might apply to other countries as well. The term "creamery" is chosen, even though there are other terms in other English speaking countries ("butter factory" in Australia), because creameries produced a variety of products, not just butter. There are also usually still referred to as "creameries" by local people and on commemorative plaques.

Creameries were industrial units in rural Ireland where dairy farmers brought their milk churns for the milk to be skimmed, the cream to be kept and processed in the creamery into butter or cheese (sometimes ice-cream) and the skimmed milk returned to the farmer to be fed to animals. Creameries were important social hubs in rural communities as well as playing an essential part in the economic life of the area. They often have a distinct architecture with a loading bay and wide window openings. Because of their economic importance, some of them came under attack in the Irish War of Independence.

Tagging

Creamery buildings (in Ireland) are recognizable by certain architectural features like the loading ramp (see examples in Timoleague and Brandonvale below); some still have an external man_made=chimney present (see Brandonvale and Callan examples). Some disused creameries might still have their name on them (see Ballingarry and Callan examples, possibly Bruree), some might have a commemorative memorial=plaque for the creamery.

Essential tag

Key + Tag	Description
historic=creamery	(For them to appear on histosm.org. Overpass-turbo for Ireland)

There is an established tag for building=brewery, so there is a possibility to apply the equivalent to creameries still in use.

Additional tags

Key + Tag	Description
start_date=*	If the date of the opening is known.
end_date=*	If the date of the closure of the creamery is known. This might be found on a commemorative plaque on the building or nearby.
heritage=yes	If the building is listed as a protected structure on an official register. Please add the appropriate ref= in that case.

The usual additional tags for buildings like building:levels, roof:shape etc can be added as well.

Examples

• 

  Ballyfoyle Creamery, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland on the British War Office map

• 

  A photograph of Bruree Creamery in County Limerick, Ireland during the 1920s, at which time it was frequently the site of a "Soviet". Seemingly anti Anglo-Irish Treaty graffiti appears on the wall but is obscured by workers posing in front of it

• 

  Creamery building in Timoleague, Co. Cork

• 

  Co-op creamery in Ballingarry, Co. Tipperary (disused)

• 

  Co-op creamery in Callan, Co. Kilkenny (opened 1899)

• 

  Brandonvale Co-op creamery in Graiguenamanagh, Co. Kilkenny (opened 1916). Re-opened as a pharmacy in September 2021.

• 

  The Old Creamery at Tarff, Twynholm, Scotland

• 

  Bladnoch Creamery. Bladnoch Creamery established by the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society in 1899 was the largest employer in the Wigtown area and in continuous operation for the longest time of any of the businesses in the village. It soon became a site of many buildings and produced its own Bluebell margarine, as well as making cheese, butter and cooking fat. Its closure in the late 1980s was a major blow to the local area of Wigtown. It is now home to an industrial site and renamed Bladnoch Bridge Estate.

• creameries as listed monuments in Ireland (with more photographic examples)
• creameries as listed buildings in England

External discussions

Please comment on the discussion page.

Voting

Voting closed

Voting on this proposal has been closed.

It was approved with 12 votes for, 2 votes against and 1 abstention.

• I approve this proposal. --ConorCastlehaven (talk) 09:08, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Creamery locations are an important part of the Irish rural landscape and were of huge socioeconomic importance for smallholders during the late 19th century and much of the 20th century. Jerome Geaney in his article "Dairying in Castlehaven in the 1900's" - Castlehaven History Society Journal - Vol. 1 -2020 identified 8 creamery sites that existed in the parish of Castlehaven during the 1900's. Each of these creameries was important for small farmers and they were prepared to go to court to defend their rights to use them as documented in Geaney's excellent Journal entry. This is just one small parish in Co. Cork, similar densities of creameries existed right across the island of Ireland and beyond.

• I approve this proposal. --Gerw88 (talk) 20:20, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

• I approve this proposal. --Dieterdreist (talk) 13:58, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• I oppose this proposal. Two issues: (1) the historical aspect to this value hasn't been defined well enough for me (e.g., Are they really that historically important - why and says who? Are they included on some historical register? etc.) and (2) since creameries still exist, it seems like a "creamery" should be defined before even considering creating a new value in historic. For example, why shouldn't creameries be tagged as building=creamery (or building=industrial, industrial=creamery) and simply use building:use=* if the building is no longer used as a creamery? Or perhaps adding historic=yes to creameries of some particular historical important. Casey boy (talk) 15:04, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

since when do we care about historical registers, and why would historic=yes be better?—Dieterdreist (talk) 15:14, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

It's one of the measures of historical importance given on the historic=* key Wiki page under "When can this key be used". Of course it's not a criterion, but a measure of the importance, hence why I said "e.g.,". I'm not saying historic=yes would be better, I'm saying this proposal hasn't convinced me that historic=creamery is any better than, e.g., building=creamery with other tags. Casey boy (talk) 15:20, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

If you look under the heading Examples, you will see a list of creameries as part of heritage building lists in England and Ireland. I'd say if those governments consider them historic, so can we. I don't like the tag historic=yes, because I think it isn't a yes/ no matter; I think we can do better than just mark things as "historic". I'm also not interested in mapping "in use" creameries, if you are, please feel free to start a proposal for them. B-unicycling (talk) 17:33, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• I approve this proposal. --快乐的老鼠宝宝 (talk) 08:30, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

• I oppose this proposal. I do not agree with the use of the “historic=*” tag. I feel that historicalness (is that a word? ...by that I mean the property of being historical) is an attribute that could be added to any object, if the mapper decides that it is of historic importance. You say, “ I don't like the tag historic=yes, because I think it isn't a yes/ no matter”. In that case how do you decide whether to use the tag that you are proposing? – If it IS historic, you would tag it “historic=*”, but if NOT, you would not tag it. To me, this seems like the same binary choice.--PeterPan99 (talk) 08:33, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

The reason why I think they are of historic value is that they have historical papers/ books written about them, some of them have plaques telling their history and they are on lists of historic buildings in Ireland and in England (haven't checked any other countries). This is no decision of mine. I think that if we use the historic=*, we might as well say why they are, i.e. use a specific tag after the key rather than just the "yes". B-unicycling (talk) 09:13, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

• I approve this proposal.I welcome this tag and approve of it as proposed. If every historic-* tag is going to be opposed in this way why don't we move the whole lot of them into OpenHistoryMap and banish them from here(rhetorical question - of course there is a value and significance in this one). Two more points - creameries are significant for their role in the past, and often in rural places other things have sprung up in those locations by extension of the fact that they are recognised as congregation points. My second point is that I am not certain that I agree with the use of industrial anywhere in connection with them, though you might say the larger food processing plants that have replaced them are industrial. --DeB1gC (talk) 07:44, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

• I approve this proposal. This tag is helpful for identifying locations important to rural communities. While urban areas evolve rapidly over a period of years, rural areas where these buildings exist evolve much slower. These buildings still signify locations of importance to rural communities. --Dónal (talk) 09:28, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

• I approve this proposal. --Tadcan (talk) 12:01, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

The landscape, economic structure and social history of rural areas are built around farming activity that defines how a place looks today. For a house is can have been built as stables in a yard, an old schoolhouse etc and we can tag the original purpose of a building as well as it's current use. This is no different.

• I approve this proposal. Seems well enough defined as a type of structure that is (primarily) no longer active. I'm not even sure if a proposal was really necessary. --JesseFW (talk) 14:16, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --BrianH (talk) 10:49, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Liamio2 (talk) 20:34, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
• I have comments but abstain from voting on this proposal, This proposal defines a value for historical buildings and mention building=brewery as there is no building=creamery. Shouldn't we start to define what is a creamery (closed or not) and then extend semantics about tagging historical ones? Comments mentioned not all creameries are closed, we need to tag all of them in consistent way.. Fanfouer (talk) 13:13, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

• I approve this proposal. This doesn't provide a method for tagging local places where butter, cheese, and ice cream is made today, but perhaps if the need arises there can also be an amenity=creamery. --Chronoshift (talk) 20:45, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Ibanez (talk) 06:08, 28 October 2021 (UTC)