When Google offered to move us to England, I was glad that Google was part of my life. But I had no IDEA that many days Google tools would become my primary method of research.
When I finished editing and posting last week’s photos, I was at loose ends. I wouldn’t have more photos for a while, and now what was I to do on my project? Ah-HA! After all the painstaking work that it took to identify the latitude and longitude for the 123 churches with monuments, why not get lat/long for the 850 monumental brasses and incised slabs listed in my database? Sure! I could do it. I’d learned lots while tracking down those first 100 churches, I could do more.
Here is my method:
First try Google maps, using church name, city name, and county. Sometimes this gets you right on the place you want, with a single marker right on top of the church. Then all you have to do is copy the html that pops up with the little “link to” button (next to the print button), paste that gobbledygook into a blank document, and find the numbers that represent the latitude/longitude of the marker (look for something like ll=51.967399,-0.00118 – but make sure you don’t copy the numbers after “sll” if it shows up, because while they are lat/long data, they aren’t what you want).
Often Google maps will have multiple suggestions, and you’ll have to zoom in to see which is correct. Find the marker you want, click it, and a window pops up with “more info” as link. When you click that, a Google+ page about the church opens, with a small map. Double click that map and a new full-featured Googlemap will open from which you can extract the lat/long as described above. Sometimes, when you’re really lucky, the Google+ page will link to the church’s website.
Sometimes the church isn’t one of the options Googlemaps found for you and marked with an icon. If you landed in the right town, look around a moment. Google has a special icon they use for marking churches; scan for that. If you’re in a medium-sized town and don’t want to do a virtual flyover of the whole place, look for “Church Lane” or “Rectory Road” and start hunting there. If you find the church icon, click through to the Google+ page and the church-centered Googlemap. Data collected.
If you didn’t land in the right town, or aren’t sure, it’s time to leave Google. For Church of England sites, www.achurchnearyou.com is a fantastic resource. They usually have at least an address for the church and a map of where it is (a Googlemap, of course). Using this data, you can usually go back to Googlemaps and find the right spot. It is worth clicking through the tabs on this site, though. Sometimes the “About Us” page has a welcome that includes information about when they are open. Sometimes this is coded on the “Features and Facilities” page; a door icon means it is an open church; rolling over will give you the hours. A key icon means that it is locked but there is a keyholder nearby.
Sometimes you enter an address into Googlemaps, you know you’re in the right town, but you haven’t landed on the church. Many of the churches, especially in small towns, haven’t been marked with an icon. Then you have to find it – churches don’t look all that different from other buildings when viewed from above. Road names are great clues as to where to search. I recognize churches most often because they are surrounded by graveyards, which show up as a distinctive pattern of small, regularly-spaced shadows. Sometimes I’ve identified the church because it was the one building not oriented with the road, but rather aligned east-west. When I was really uncertain, I’ve even switched to street view to check out a likely building.
Once you’ve found that unlabeled church, then you have to find the latitude/longitude that will land you right on top of it. For this, I use www.findlatitudeandlongitude.com – also powered by Googlemaps. Enter the data that will get you close to the church, like town or road names, so that you can find it again. Now click anywhere on the map and the site will tell you the latitude and longitude of the marker.
If you try these sites and still can’t find the church, perhaps it is “redundant” and no longer has a congregation, but will be listed at www.visitchurches.org.uk. I’m especially looking forward to visiting these unused churches; I want them to feel loved!
Compiling this location data, augmenting my database of monuments, and exporting it to a custom Googlemap results in this:
https://1500stitches.org/map.html
My map, my pride and joy. It has been made vastly more elegant thanks to my wonderful husband.
This map is my travel plan. I want to photograph as many of the top three levels of monuments as I can. If there are churches along the way with brasses, I’m ready to stop in those, too. My order from Whitewinds arrived last week. It will take a long time to use up that roll of brass rubbing paper!
You mention that you have trouble recognizing unlabeled churches from the satellite view in Google Maps. Do you get any better results with Google Earth?