Frequently Asked Questions

General

What can I look at for free on the site?

When you register you automatically get the buildings of the Soke of Peterborough for free. The Soke is a small administrative area of about twenty villages located between Lincolnshire to the north and Huntingdonshire to the south. It contains a range of building types and provides a good introduction to the other counties on the website.

In addition, if you search on People you can search over the entire name database on the site. Obviously, if you look at the details of the buildings and objects associated with those people you will only be able to see the ones in counties you've subscribed to.

Why isn't the site free like everything else on the Net?

Firstly, not everything on the Internet is free and the more detailed and useful information usually doesn't come for free. Secondly, it requires a great deal of money to do the field work, do the research, write all the software, perform the data entry and pay for and maintain the web site. This huge undertaking is not financed by grants and is being provided on the Internet at a price far below what it is actually worth. Indeed, we are always interested in hearing from any budding philanthropists out there who might be interested in donating towards the cost of this important project. If you'd like to then please contact us.

Coverage

How much of the country will be covered?

As much as possible - time and budget permitting.

How much is currently covered?

The project takes place in two phases: field work and data entry. Both of these take a considerable amount of time and the data entry phase lags a long way behind the field work. Currently around 12 full counties (and bits of others) have been covered by field work (that's about 25% of England). So far only four of the smaller counties have been entered in the database. Put another way, the picture library currently has over 170,000 images but only about 18,000 have been published on this site so far.

Hasn't this been done already by English Heritage / National Monuments Record?

No. There is nothing like this available anywhere else. While there are several photographic libraries in the UK which contain photographs of historic buildings, none of them have anywhere near the detail, coverage and search capabilities of this site.

What counties will be available next?

The next area to be installed will be Hastings Rape in Sussex. This may be followed by North-West Shropshire.

Photographs

Can I use the photos on my web site?

The pictures are subject to copyright (please see the Terms & Conditions page). Please contact us before using the pictures.

Are higher quality versions of the pictures available?

Yes. The pictures on the web site were derived from large format pictures ranging in resolution from 1600x1200 to 4000x3000 pixels. The pictures are available for purchase, cost depending on size and usage. Please contact us for details.

Why aren't the full resolution pictures on the site?

There are numerous reasons why they aren't. The most important one is that the bandwidth and storage capacity needed would be enormous. There are no plans to provide higher quality or larger pictures than are currently on the site purely for reasons of economy.

What equipment was used to take the photos?

Every photograph taken for the Digital Atlas of England project has been made using digital cameras. The camera currently in use is a Canon EOS 1Ds giving near medium format camera quality at a resolution of 4000x3000 pixels.

When I click on each thumbnail a new popup window is displayed. Why not show them in just one popup?

This is to facilitate comparison. For instance, if you find two fonts that you want to compare then you can look at the popups side by side.

Searching

Using Keyword Search doesn't return what I was expecting / returns no results. Why?

If you've tried looking for "Perpendicular" or "Early English" in order to find buildings of a particular age then you've most likely found no results. The answer to this is quite simple; the keyword searches only returns matches for words that appear in the descriptions. These two examples don't appear at all, mainly because the descriptions eschew these terms and usually use century-based dates (eg: "early C16"). Even when the terms are used they are given in their standard abbreviated forms ("Perp", "EE", "Dec").

Keyword search is really a catch-all search. You should look at using "Find by Place" or "Find by Type" before using keywords because the results you will get will be far more accurate. In the case of the above example, using "Find by Type" is the correct way; there you can specify a range of dates to search over.

How can I find only churches with spires (or some other attribute)?

If you select Find Buildings by Type and then select Churches/Religious Buildings from the drop down list you'll find a button appears called Add/Edit Constraints. Clicking on the button displays a special section that applies only to religious buildings. There are thirteen constraints in all (including Spire Type). Setting these will constrain your search to buildings that satisfy the given values.

Using Find People I can't find someone (e.g.: stained glass artist Charles Kempe).

Searching for names is usually quite simple - but not always! There are two parts to a name search; first names and last name. Notice the plural for the first (given) names - this is where you can get caught out. In the example, if we'd just provided the last name Kempe and not specified the first names then the search would return the Kempe we want and any others who share his last name. If, however, we provide a first name then we have to provide all of his first names for the search to be successful, i.e.: Charles Eamer. This would return the Kempe we want. Only providing Charles in the first names field would not return the person we want (but would return anyone just called Charles Kempe).

Don't panic! There are other ways to do the search without providing all the names. One way is to use a wildcard (the %). For first names we could have given Charles% which would return everyone with the first given name of Charles followed by anything else. We could also use %Charles% - so if his name order was actually Eamer Charles Kempe then that would have picked him up too.

The man in our particular example is usually known as Charles Eamer Kempe, and usually abbreviated to C. E. Kempe. If we only knew the initials we could also find him by giving the firstnames as C%E% and Kempe as the last name.

What is the Alternative Name in the Find People results?

This field gives the name that the person may otherwise be known as. For married women it usually contains their full maiden name (when known). It may also contain the person's title if they have one (e.g.: John Byng is also known as Lord Torrington).

Why does it say 'subscribe' when I look at buildings or objects of certain people?

Searching for people covers the entire database. If you then attempt to look at the details of buildings or objects of these people in counties you aren't subscribed to then you will find a link taking you to the Subscription page. Subscribe to the county and the information will become available.