Today’s offering for readers is the three Gs! Three for the price of one – now where can you find a deal like that these days?
Firstly, Geograph – a ‘geography project for the people’, where contributors take photographs and upload them to the website. Contemporary photographs are available of properties, neighbourhoods, shops, agricultural areas and more. Using ‘search’ from the homepage, you can search by place name, postcode or grid reference. A search on ‘Canford Magna’ shows fifty five results including the church (see below), the boathouse, the village hall, Lady Wimborne cottages – a wonderful resource for people who live overseas and are tracing forebears in the UK.
Then there is Google Earth, which displays satellite images of varying resolution of the Earth’s surface, allowing users to see things like cities and houses looking perpendicularly (at right angles for those non-mathematicians amongst you!) or at an oblique angle, with perspective. The degree of resolution available is based somewhat on the points of interest and popularity, but most land (except for some islands) is covered in at least 15 metres of resolution. It is free to download and the Google Street View will augment your vision of a community enormously.
And last but not least of the three Gs, GENUKI – providing a virtual reference library of genealogical information of particular relevance to the UK and Ireland, the service is non-commercial and is maintained by a charitable trust. The content varies greatly from county-to-county as it is dependent on the work of volunteers. Under each county, towns and parishes are listed with sub-sections including cemeteries, census, gazetteers, genealogy, history, church records …. the list, in many cases, is endless. I would recommend you take a look and if you are able to offer resources, information or time to develop the site further for users, I am sure the Trustees would be delighted to hear from you!
