OS maps

[mossysal]

Dear Tom,
Thanks for your comments re cut-and-paste. Do you ever sleep ?!

The gazetteer link http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/freefun/didyouknow/ is the best for finding the smallest places (Do you have an input into it?) but the Gridref format is hard to use and can’t very easily be copied onto the sheet. It says it links to Get-a-Map but I can’t find out how –

I normally use
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/getamap/ but it doesn’t find the obscure places. It’s the easiest to find gridrefs on;

The Home page:-
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/ links to Get-map but not to the first site. Am I missing something? Is it in the hands of the OS?
Thanks for any help
Sarah

[Tom Humphrey]

Unfortunately OS keeps changing where there pages are and as you observed appears to have two distinct gazetteer services - which seems a strange way of doing things.

The http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/freefun/didyouknow/ page used to give accessible grid refs, but the coordinates can still be used:

e.g. Eastcote
gives coordinates of x(511500) y(188500)

if you enter 51/115885 into the gridref field then this will be converted automatically to TQ115885.

If anyone knows of a more usable map/gazetteer source for the UK then I'd be happy to link into it. (also is there anything for Ireland - I've yet to a good online Irish mapping site)

regards,

Tom

[mossysal]

Hi, Tom,
I have been bothering OS with this and have now had the following reply. Hope it is of interest!
Best wishes
Sarah


>Thank you for your e-mail dated 7 August 2009.

>As you were aware the web page >http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/freefun/didyouknow used >to say that it links directly to Get-a-map™ unfortunately this was an >error that has existed for some time. The link takes you to our online >Leisure Map shop, which is the intention –our web team have now >changed the text to reflect this.

>Our web team also inform me that there are no future plans to have a >direct link on our home page to ‘Did you know…? And that it will >continue to link from the ‘wider placename search’ of Get-a-map™.

>Whilst I appreciate this is probably not the outcome you would have >hoped for, I hope that the above information explains the reasons why >these particular issues occurred.

>Thank you for contacting Ordnance Survey thus enabling to us correct an >error on our web site.