Olympic Route announced

Doesn’t pass directly through the village. From Saturday 21st July – Monday 23rd. More details here. I love the fact that it’s sponsored by Coca-cola. Beyond parody.

Blackheath Fireworks 2011

Lewisham council have added a page detailing which roads will be closed this year during the fireworks (which I have never seem – thanks Dad!)

Greenwich council are still being mean and refusing to fund the fireworks, as mentioned on 853blog a while back.

The fireworks display is on November 5th at 8pm, and admission is free.

Oh, and for some reason there’s a Blackheath Fireworks twitter account. It doesn’t do much except go “Whoosh” every so often (nothing wrong with that though). I’m guessing it’s not official, judging by the profile page…

More on boundary changes

Good article in the Telegraph about the nonsense of not releasing the actual maps.
Guardian mash up of the new boundary maps
Telegraph combining the Guardian’s maps with the existing boundaries.
(Animation above is based on the Blackheath bit of the Telegraph’s page).

PS- that’s my quota of animated GIFs used up for the year… probably…

Boundary Changes

These boundary changes are completely baffling me. Because we live on the threshold of what would be called “Deptford & Greenwich” and “Lewisham & Catford” I’ve merged the two maps together as best I could. Hope it helps you make more sense of it.

The Graun have now put together an interactive map. Billed as “The map the boundary commission wouldn’t give out: England’s new constituencies”.

Blackheath Fun Fair 2011

More photos coming soon here.

12 noon until 10pm Friday-Tuesday inclusive.

£1 Entrance Fee
£3 Dodgems
£2.50 The Terminator
£4 2xtreme (terrifying looking spinning thing seen from miles away)
£2 Waltzer
£2.50 Bounce
£3 Oblivion (another spinning thing)
£2.50 Cage
£2.50 Hook a duck
£2 Ghost train
£2 Ferris wheel
£2 Burger
£2 Candy floss

UPDATE: About a zillion people are googling this blog asking “where is blackheath fun fair?”, so here’s a map. Not sure about the circus location though.. If it’s wrong, let me know in the comments. I’ll try to make a more accurate version later. Come by train (parking is terrible in Blackheath), turn left out of the station and walk up the hill. When you get to the heath, you’ll see the fair.

View Larger Map

Beggars Bush

Neil wrote to me, as he’s in the process of setting up a website dedicated to the place name and literary phrase Beggars Bush. He noticed that there is a “Beggars Bush” listed on a map of Blackheath from 1695 by Samuel Travers, and wondered if anyone knew the origin of the name? It isn’t indexed as a place name in Neil Rhind’s Volumes 1 or 2 of Blackheath Village and Environs.

There is a terrible online interface to the map mentioned in the post, at the National Maritime Museum. It is completely beyond me as to why a museum would insist on only providing tiny piecemeal chunks of a map like this. They say the map is copyright, but given that it was created in 1695, and published in 1812, I can’t help thinking it should really be in the public hands (even if the mechanical copyright to the photograph is owned by the museum). It’s not as though bandwidth for delivering large images is unaffordable.

Interestingly, the delivery mechanism is very simple:

For example, this link:
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/servlet/ThumbnailServlet?src=%2FLargeImages%2FF04%2FF0460%2FF0460%5F1%5F7%5F19%2Ejpg&width=400

Delivers a single square of the map.

Increasing the numbers 5F7 and %5F19 within the URL above, adjusts the Y and X coordinates shown, respectively. Which makes me think that any web developers with a spare Sunday afternoon could probably pull down the entire map, tile it together, and then upload it somewhere out of harms way…

Map of Liofshema, Grenewic, Hacheham

Lovely hand drawn maps imagining Anglo-Saxon London. Blackheath included geographically, but not mentioned explicitly.

Cave Map overlaid on Google Earth

UPDATE: Several people pointed out that the map was oriented wrongly. I think I’ve corrected it now, but please feel free to correct it yourself (.kmz file), and send me a more accurate version! Incorrect version was here.

Here’s the map of the Blackheath Cavern from 1946 (mentioned in the previous post) overlaid onto Google Earth. I couldn’t work out how to get it into Google Maps unfortunately. Zoomed out version below (old map is in the top left corner, village is at the bottom).

Blackheath Map of Caverns from 1946 overlaid on google earth

Pushing the boundaries…

I was wondering why Darryl had made such a long and complicated description of the electoral boundary changes – why not just upload a map? Surely the maps outlining the electoral boundaries must be held in public, and be freely distributable?

Well, not exactly. There’s this wet blanket of a site, from Ordnance Survey (friends of the Free Our Data campaign). Good luck with zooming out. And you’re not allowed to view more than one constituency at a time… But why on earth would you want to do that? Ridiculous. And who paid for the creation of these maps? You and me (and probably your great-grandparents, come to think of it).

You are also not allowed to reproduce them. Unless you’re in Sweden and have a rather more relaxed view of copyright law… Someone appears to have uploaded a map showing the old boundaries around Blackheath in blue, and the new ones in red. Unchanged bits are in purple.

http://bayimg.com/lalCKAach

LOCOG map

A map of the proposed olympic equestrian events in Blackheath & Greenwich has been released. Just imagine the brown bits strewn with dead trees and a million muddy footprints…