The PastPlace API offers a simple web service, responding to a variety of queries by returning information from the same database as underlies the Vision of Britain web site, in a range of structured formats. These queries can be typed into a web browser as URLs, and the response viewed in the browser. However, the queries would more usually be sent by another server on the web, and the response processed by that server. That server might itself be creating web pages for use by the general public, but it might also be a cataloguing or records management system, using our API as a name authority. This poster is the first public description of the servic

Aucott, Paula

Southall, Humphrey

von Lunen, Alexander

Westwood, John

English

Von Luenen, Alexander

Portsmouth University Research Portal (Pure)

the historical gazetteer service from the people who brought you A Vision of Britain through Time
Map showing the different geograph-
ical extent of Cambridgeshire as an 
Anceint, Registration and Adminis-
trative county – we treat all of these 
as parts of the place Cambridgeshire
6($5&+,1*)25$3/$&(%<1$0(
The simplest possible query is as follows. This par-
ticular name matches just one place, but many 
names would return many separate matches: 
http://data.pastplace.org/search?q=colwall
:+<3$673/$&("
The database behind A Vision of Britain through Time already holds far more than just Britain: outline coverage of 
Europe as a whole; detailed listings from the Swedish and Estonian National Archives; developing detailed coverage 
of Ireland. PastPlace.org seems a more appropriate name in the long term. We cannot re-brand the whole site for 
now, but will use PastPlace.org for new services, starting with our gazetteer API (Applications Programming Inter-
face). That API accesses exactly the same database as A Vision of Britain through Time, although some information 
has had to be excluded for now for copyright reasons.
:+$7,67+(3$673/$&($3,"
The API offers a simple web service, responding to a vari-
ety of queries by returning information from the data-
base in a range of structured formats. These queries can 
be typed into a web browser as URLs, and the response 
viewed in the browser. However, the queries would more 
usually be sent by another server on the web, and the re-
sponse processed by that server. That server might itself 
be creating web pages for use by the general public, but it 
might also be a cataloguing or records management 
system, using our API as a name authority.
:+$76,17+(81'(5/<,1*'$7$%$6("
   3ODFHVGazetteers created by mapping agencies like 
the Ordnance Survey are based on topographic maps and 
list landscape features, classified using a feature type the-
saurus; so Gruinard Island, Gruinard House and the Gruin-
ard river are three different adjacent features in NW Scot-
land. Over history features come and go; and historians 
and archivists are more concerned with documents than 
the landscape. We therefore currently list 22,095 places 
which are bundles of name attestations appearing in docu-
ments and maps. For us, Gruinard is a single place, de-
fined by Francis Groome in 1882 as “Greinord or Gruin-
ard, a bay, an island, and two streams of NW Ross-shire.”
8QLWVMore formal documents tend to be about le-
gally defined administrative units, not just places. These 
can have detailed boundary polygons, but their locations 
may be unknown. Many towns had ten or twenty parishes, 
districts, constituencies etc named after them, so we 
group units into places, and all those units' names are also 
names of the relevant place. We currently define 79,266 
units.
3ODFHQDPHV In some senses, we aim to define as few 
places as possible, but to hold many different names for 
each of them. As a result we currently hold 190,264 
names, each assigned to either a place or a unit, and many 
to both.
/RFDWLRQVAll this information is held in an object-
relational database which can hold geographical coordi-
nates as well as text, numbers and relationships. As a 
result, it can also be queried by location.
6285&(6
Our database of administrative units includes the main name authorities identified by the National Council on 
Archives in their 1997 report, Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names 
(http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/naming-rules.pdf):
   )UHGHULFN<RXQJV
Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England (Royal Historical Society, 1979 and 1991)
0HOYLOOH5LFKDUGV
Welsh Administrative and Territorial Units (Univ. of Wales Press, 1969)
5LFKDUG&KHIILQV
Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (British Library, 1998)
Gazetteer of Scottish Administrative Units compiled from census reports and other sources, including the Scottish 
Archives Network (SCAN) Gazetteer.
However, the system has been greatly extended by us from historical census listings, TNA’s Manorial Docu-
ments Register, listings of medieval vills and many other sources.
$/7(51$7,9(5(63216()250$76
The “format” parameter provides a choice of 
output:
[POA simple schema defined by the Open Street 
Map project
KWPOAn HTML table, the easiest output for a 
human to read
UGIRDF/XML, a format developed by the W3C 
(Worldwide Web Consortium) for representing RDF  
(Resource Description Framework) as XML. RDF is 
maybe the most fundamental building block of the se-
mantic web
QN3/Turtle data, an alternative and less verbose 
way of representing RDF
MVRQJavaScript Object Notation, a text-based 
open standard that is just about human-readable and 
maybe the easiest format for another computer pro-
gram to work with
3$673/$&(z
6($5&+,1*)25$3/$&(%</2&$7,21
6SHFLILHGORQJLWXGHDQGODWLWXGHLQQ7XUWOHIRUPDWILUVWRI
UHVXOWV
KWWSGDWDSDVWSODFHRUJVHDUFK"T 	T 	IRUPDW Q
.,1'62)48(5<
6($5&+,1*)25$1<7+,1*
For more information about the API, call it without any parameters: http://data.pastplace.org/search
6($5&+,1*)253$57,&8/$581,76%<1$0(
This is currently impossible as, before you search for units of a particular type, we need to create a mechanism by 
which you can explore our typology of, so far, over 200 kinds of unit
Humphrey Southall & Paula Aucott, 
Great Britain Historical GIS Project
Dept. of Geography, Buckingham Building,
Lion Terrace,
Portsmouth, PO1 3HE, UK
Tel: 023 9284 2500
Email: gbhgis@port.ac.uk


PastPlace: the historical gazetteer service from the people who brought you A Vision of Britain through Time

University of Huddersfield Repository

University of Huddersfield RepositorySouthall, Humphrey, Aucott, Paula, von Lunen, Alexander and Westwood, JohnPastPlace: the historical gazetteer service from the people who brought you A Vision of Britain through TimeOriginal CitationSouthall, Humphrey, Aucott, Paula, von Lunen, Alexander and Westwood, John (2013) PastPlace: the historical gazetteer service from the people who brought you A Vision of Britain through Time. In: UK Archives Discovery Forum, 7th March 2013, National Archives, Kew, London. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/22940/The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of theUniversity, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the itemson this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners.Users may access full items free of charge; copies of full text items generallycan be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in anyformat or medium for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profitpurposes without prior permission or charge, provided:• The authors, title and full bibliographic details is credited in any copy;• A hyperlink and/or URL is included for the original metadata page; and• The content is not changed in any way.For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, pleasecontact the Repository Team at: E.mailbox@hud.ac.uk.http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/the historical gazetteer service from the people who brought you A Vision of Britain through TimeMap showing the different geograph-ical extent of Cambridgeshire as an Anceint, Registration and Adminis-trative county – we treat all of these as parts of the place Cambridgeshire6($5&+,1*)25$3/$&(%<1$0(The simplest possible query is as follows. This par-ticular name matches just one place, but many names would return many separate matches: http://data.pastplace.org/search?q=colwall:+<3$673/$&("The database behind A Vision of Britain through Time already holds far more than just Britain: outline coverage of Europe as a whole; detailed listings from the Swedish and Estonian National Archives; developing detailed coverage of Ireland. PastPlace.org seems a more appropriate name in the long term. We cannot re-brand the whole site for now, but will use PastPlace.org for new services, starting with our gazetteer API (Applications Programming Inter-face). That API accesses exactly the same database as A Vision of Britain through Time, although some information has had to be excluded for now for copyright reasons.:+$7,67+(3$673/$&($3,"The API offers a simple web service, responding to a vari-ety of queries by returning information from the data-base in a range of structured formats. These queries can be typed into a web browser as URLs, and the response viewed in the browser. However, the queries would more usually be sent by another server on the web, and the re-sponse processed by that server. That server might itself be creating web pages for use by the general public, but it might also be a cataloguing or records management system, using our API as a name authority.:+$76,17+(81'(5/<,1*'$7$%$6("   3ODFHVGazetteers created by mapping agencies like the Ordnance Survey are based on topographic maps and list landscape features, classified using a feature type the-saurus; so Gruinard Island, Gruinard House and the Gruin-ard river are three different adjacent features in NW Scot-land. Over history features come and go; and historians and archivists are more concerned with documents than the landscape. We therefore currently list 22,095 places which are bundles of name attestations appearing in docu-ments and maps. For us, Gruinard is a single place, de-fined by Francis Groome in 1882 as “Greinord or Gruin-ard, a bay, an island, and two streams of NW Ross-shire.”8QLWVMore formal documents tend to be about le-gally defined administrative units, not just places. These can have detailed boundary polygons, but their locations may be unknown. Many towns had ten or twenty parishes, districts, constituencies etc named after them, so we group units into places, and all those units' names are also names of the relevant place. We currently define 79,266 units.3ODFHQDPHV In some senses, we aim to define as few places as possible, but to hold many different names for each of them. As a result we currently hold 190,264 names, each assigned to either a place or a unit, and many to both./RFDWLRQVAll this information is held in an object-relational database which can hold geographical coordi-nates as well as text, numbers and relationships. As a result, it can also be queried by location.6285&(6Our database of administrative units includes the main name authorities identified by the National Council on Archives in their 1997 report, Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/naming-rules.pdf):   )UHGHULFN<RXQJVGuide to the Local Administrative Units of England (Royal Historical Society, 1979 and 1991)0HOYLOOH5LFKDUGVWelsh Administrative and Territorial Units (Univ. of Wales Press, 1969)5LFKDUG&KHIILQVParliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (British Library, 1998)Gazetteer of Scottish Administrative Units compiled from census reports and other sources, including the Scottish Archives Network (SCAN) Gazetteer.However, the system has been greatly extended by us from historical census listings, TNA’s Manorial Docu-ments Register, listings of medieval vills and many other sources.$/7(51$7,9(5(63216()250$76The “format” parameter provides a choice of output:[POA simple schema defined by the Open Street Map projectKWPOAn HTML table, the easiest output for a human to readUGIRDF/XML, a format developed by the W3C (Worldwide Web Consortium) for representing RDF  (Resource Description Framework) as XML. RDF is maybe the most fundamental building block of the se-mantic webQN3/Turtle data, an alternative and less verbose way of representing RDFMVRQJavaScript Object Notation, a text-based open standard that is just about human-readable and maybe the easiest format for another computer pro-gram to work with3$673/$&(z6($5&+,1*)25$3/$&(%</2&$7,216SHFLILHGORQJLWXGHDQGODWLWXGHLQQ7XUWOHIRUPDWILUVWRIUHVXOWVKWWSGDWDSDVWSODFHRUJVHDUFK"T 	T 	IRUPDW Q.,1'62)48(5<6($5&+,1*)25$1<7+,1*For more information about the API, call it without any parameters: http://data.pastplace.org/search6($5&+,1*)253$57,&8/$581,76%<1$0(This is currently impossible as, before you search for units of a particular type, we need to create a mechanism by which you can explore our typology of, so far, over 200 kinds of unitHumphrey Southall & Paula Aucott, Great Britain Historical GIS ProjectDept. of Geography, Buckingham Building,Lion Terrace,Portsmouth, PO1 3HE, UKTel: 023 9284 2500Email: gbhgis@port.ac.uk

Historical GIS Project Dept. of Geography,

Name not available

https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/ws/files/199845/TNA_PastPlacePoster.pdf

PastPlace: the historical gazetteer service from the people who brought you A Vision of Britain through Time

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Portsmouth University Research Portal (Pure)

University of Huddersfield Repository

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