Monday, August 29, 2011

Putting Culture on the Map


In the UK tourist signs have a brown background and are often referred to as 'brown signs'. Their purpose is to direct people to tourist attractions, such as castles, museums or historical buildings.

Brown signs are the responsibility of local authorities and therefore there is no central record of all the country's brown signs. Follow the Brown Signs is a website dedicated to tracking down (and mapping) all the humble brown signs in the UK.

It is possible to search for brown signs by address or postcode and view a Google Map of all the signs around that location. There are 93 different types of brown signs, signifying such diverse categories as good brass rubbing locations and 'heavy horse' centres.

Follow the Brown Signs lets you search for brown sign locations by category. As well as providing a little history about each category you can also view each of the 93 different types of brown sign on its own individual map.


The UK's Blue Plaque scheme is a way of commemorating the lives of famous residents of the country. Blue circular signs are erected on houses to indicate that someone of note was born or once lived there.

The PlaqueGuide is a Google Map of the UK's blue plaque houses. The map uses blue circular map markers to show the location of houses with plaques. You can find out who the plaque is for by just mousing over a marker. If you click on a marker you can view a Street View of the plaque and read a Wikipedia article about the individual commemorated by the plaque.

The PlaqueGuide is crowdsourced, so anyone can add information about the location of a blue plaque.

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4 comments:

David Coughlan said...

Thanks for the write up and resultant blip in traffic on the Plaque Guide site and a quick apology. The existing images of the plaques themselves have inexplicably disappeared over the bank holiday weekend, so we are looking into that as I type. Normal service will be restored as soon as possible. I did have a nice new contribution from Alan Thompson for "Tommy Trinder" this morning which you can view....which has an image.

http://www.plaqueguide.com/?locationid=647

regards,
Dave Coughlan

David Coughlan said...

I should also mention that Plaque Guide is not just about London or just the UK. It is about the world, so check out the New York and Paris plaques on the site when you get a chance.

regards,
Dave Coughlan

Amanda Hone said...

Thank you for the above piece on my website, great that it's getting noticed! Wherever you see a brown sign you can quickly add it to the database and be part of mapping all our brown signs attractions of Britain http://www.followthebrownsigns.com/get-involved/
Have fun brown-signing!

David Coughlan said...

Further to my last comment on the missing images I am happy to report that the images have now been restored on the Plaque Guide site so please do revist and have a looksee.

kind regards,
Dave Coughlan