The Scottish Military Research Group - Commemorations Project

columba · Joined: 19 Feb 2014 Posts: 404

I've just found a website called A Street Near You; apologies if it has been mentioned on here already - I'm way behind most of you experts!! It purports to show casualties from WW1 on an inter-active map, right down to street level.

I've found several mistakes!! I've also found several men who don't feature on the Stirling War Memorial but whose wives were living in Stirling at the time they completed the CWGC information; a few of the men were born in Stirling but many were not. I can only assume they had been stationed at the Castle at some point and married local girls. I think some who had been born in Stirling were possibly sons of regular soldiers, again stationed at the Castle.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on the website!

https://astreetnearyou.org

spoons · Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 1:22 pm Post subject:

It seems like a good idea but is taken from CWGC data which we know is incomplete with regards to addresses and has its problems. Taking Carsphairn as an example, the local memorial has 13 WW1 names, but 'a street near you' only lists one of those plus another two men who are not commemorated locally. Still - additional resources are always welcome.

\Paul

stuartn · Joined: 13 Dec 2016 Posts: 2551

This is also a feed from the IWM 'Lives of the First World War' Project. That was initially populated with the CWGC data (as a joint IWM/CWGC project), and has then been open for the whole 4 centenary years for people to populate each individual casualty detail, with further and better information. really the more information the better as long as it is referenced.

So I guess the answer to improve the data is to add information to the 'Lives' website, which anyone can do. The last I think I heard is that it is open to inputting until February 2019, after which it becomes an archived, but still available website, in perpetuity as a lasting legacy of the centenary.

To take Paul's observations specifically it sounds as if no-one has improved the data beyond CWGC level for the Carsphairn men.

DelBoy · Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 5:26 pm Post subject:

I stumbled across this recently too.

Great potential but a lack of people doing the hard yards.

tanyagar · Joined: 01 Sep 2013 Posts: 121 Location: France

There’s also the problem of streets that no longer exist. For Plean they show 13 men, not all of whom are on the war memorial incidentally, but those who lived in the miners rows aren’t mentioned. The map is a modern one and the rows have been replaced...
Tanya

Merseman · Joined: 07 Aug 2013 Posts: 332 Location: Duns, Berwickshire

Do people mean the address that sometimes appears in the 'Additional Info' section of an entry on CWGC website is what's being used?

i.e. "Wife of Mrs Smith, North Street, Othertown" or "Mr & Mrs Smith, Othertown, parents" or "Born in Othertown"

From my experience in Duns, astonishingly few seem to relate to where the soldiers actually lived before / during the war. Locally, we can compare with addresses given in newspaper articles and a roll of honour the county paper printed in July 1919. Very often all 3 disagree; if 2-1 CWGC frequently out.

If that's what meant then I don't suppose it's particularly surprising there is often a discrepancy... Middle-aged men could have been long resident away from their parents; parents and widows might well have moved by the time CWGC info was gathered in 1920s; indeed some widows appear remarried.

Must say I picked-up an excellent "Scone Remembers" town map recently.

columba · Joined: 19 Feb 2014 Posts: 404

I think the information on CWGC was given by the next of kin at the time the headstone was erected or the memorial panels done. That would have been in the 1920s so some families may have moved house in the intervening years.

stuartn · Joined: 13 Dec 2016 Posts: 2551

I've put these questions/comments to the site developer, and this was his response (I didn't actually know who it was, but had a very good idea, which turned out to be right)-

It's mainly built using CWGC data, but signposting Life[Lives of the First World War] Stories where these are connected. Currently the addresses are all taken from CWGC records, but the aim is to also extract those that have been added to Lives, plus add additional placemarkers for any memorials (especially useful when, for example, someone is filtering to a particular name). regarding extinct roads, it is certainly an issue as the actual locations were created using a lookup on Google. Sometimes it copes OK, but as its base data is principally modern it can often fail to find an address that no longer exists (and indeed sometimes makes some fairly wild suggestions!). I've looked at using a more contemporary dataset such as the GB1900 transcriptions ( http://geo.nls.uk/maps/gb1900/#zoom=6&lat=55.0000&lon=-2.5000&layer=1 ) but currently they don't have a service that allows the sort of predictions that Google does.

END

So it's very much a work in progress!! Hope that helps

Stuart

columba · Joined: 19 Feb 2014 Posts: 404

Thanks Stuart. It's good it is a work in progress. It's disappointing though that Lives will cease to accept data after February.