Saturday 23 April 2011

More dreadful weather for armchair mapping

The weather is glorious again today, so I set out early and took the scenic route to Windsor. I pootled around Dedworth for a while writing down some of the street names that are missing or incorrect on OSM, so I could add them when I got home. Then I rode back through Bray, with a stop at Boulter's lock where I treated myself to an ice cream and watched the boats for a while.

Dedworth is a suburb of Windsor, which happens to lie between some of my regular rides. It had quite a few missing street names, and it's a reasonable distance for a ride of a couple of hours. Those are the reasons I picked it out, not because I had a burning desire to visit Dedworth. It seems to be made up of a series of developments that mostly date from the 1930's to the 1970's. For example, here's a Pathé news clip about some self-build activity here in the 1950's.



While I was updating the OSM data I started to get curious about some of the street names, which are a bit unusual. It turns out that Dedworth has Saxon origins, and predates Windsor. Although the housing is relatively modern, they have used some names with historical associations. Examples I logged today include "Filmer Road" (Filmer was one of the Windsor Martyrs, burned at the stake for heresy in 1543), "Frymley View" (Frymley was a 16th century mayor of Windsor) and "Surly Hall Walk" (Surly Hall was a local inn, used by pupils at Eton). I also added names to some cul-de-sacs off Gallys Road, which is named after the landlord of the Garter Inn, who appears in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor.

The history of Dedworth: not as boring as I thought.

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