[Talk-GB] UK-specific tagging for rural feature names?

[Mike Collinson]

At 01:53 PM 21/06/2009, Nick Whitelegg wrote:
>Hello Mike,
>
>>I made one boo-boo:
>
>>natural=moor should be place=moor as it is really an administrative 
>designation.  The examples in the database are >place=moor.
>
>>Mike
>
>Isn't a moor a natural feature though, like a heath, etc? 

That is what I thought when I started (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorland) but it does not quite work when collecting local names as compared to identifying natural habitat.  My big thing is to collect all the often wonderful local names into OSM to help preserve usage.  I am easy though if other folks differ.

When I started checking all the "moors" around where I grew up I found that many look just like ordinary farmland and must have done so since about the eighteenth century.  The names in NPE appear to more accurately reflect assigned areas for each parish to graze their sheep rather than moorland per se. Rombalds Moor for example,  is made up of Ilkley Moor, a little unusual in being mostly for hunting rather than sheep farming, is definitely moorland, and then Baildon Moor, Hawksworth Moor, Addingham Moor, Steeton Moor, ... some of which are classic moorland and some grassy fields.

Also in the areas around Yorkshire cities, areas  can often be semi-built up but still keep the name such and such moor.


Mike