UK Quarterly Project/2023/2023 Q4 Project: Places of Worship and Cemeteries

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Welcome

The final quarterly project of 2023 is on Places of Worship and Cemeteries.

What to map/How to help

Add missing places of worship. Remove ones that are no longer used for that purpose. Add information about what religion(s) and denominations they are for.

Mapper Diaries produced a video tutorial on how they map places of worship.

Current state

Church of England

As a lockdown project I ensured all the active Anglican churches in England are mapped consistently in OSM, with the result that of the 15649 active Anglican churches in England (as of 2020, and as defined by the Church of England's website achurchnearyou.com), all of them are now in OSM mapped as ways with building=church;amenity=place_of_worship;religion=christian;denomination=anglican;wikidata=NN;name=XX other than...

  • 301 - which don't have a separate building of their own (eg meet in a school or another church etc)
  • 3 - that I just cannot find the location of

In addition there are many more mapped with various tags (by others) which are in fact closed or redundant churches. I've been marking them as disused:amenity=place_of_worship when I come across them, but there are still others that I haven't got to (yet?!).

TO DO:

  • Find the location of the 3 missing churches
  • Update existing churches in OSM that are now closed and update the tags.
  • Check for any churches built since 2020

(I can help with info on these when the project comes. Smb1001 (talk))

Potential sources and tools

StreetComplete has some quests asking about some detail of PoW - see StreetComplete/Quests - missing name=* and religion=* will be asked about.

MapRoulette Challenge for missing names (surprisingly hard; GRO list below can help in some cases).

English Heritage's National Heritage List for England (NHLE) has data for Listed Buildings (including churches and some graves), Parks and Gardens (some cemeteries) and Scheduled Ancient Monuments. This may help to complete missing name=* and add heritage tags (see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:heritage#United_Kingdom ). Similar data are available for Wales from CADW.

OS Open Greenspace includes over 7000 cemeteries as polygons, which may help with name=*.

The General Register Office has a list of all registered places of worship. Despite the headline on the linked page, it does not list only those registered for marriage. Registration is not compulsory, but wins a rates exemption. There's no obligation to de-register, so quite a few places are listed but no longer extant - especially non-conformist chapels, in my experience. (eteb3)

MapRoulette Challenge for Cemeteries in OS Open Greenspace but missing from OSM.

Pic4Review mission for places of worship missing religion=*.