Police Box Locations on Google Earth

[Mark]

Ok, I realise and have used the Police Box Map http://www.policeboxes.co.uk/ and have found it very good. I also found (thanks to Domvar) that if you click on the box it shows you a nice picture of the said box. Excellent site.

Now that said, I decided I didn't know how I could realistically use this website for my own ends and started to plot the boxes onto Google Earth with the intention of being able to use this on my mobile smart phone should I get chance to visit London. Then within a week the list of box locations arrived via Mark D and so even better!  

Some of the boxes are very easy to locate because of the precise description and archive photo's, others take a little more detective work coupled with a fine hint of guesswork. I've been using a combination of the Mets list of descriptions, google earth in 1945 view and what is sometimes left behind such as gpo floor covers or new phone boxes etc. One thing is that in a number of locations there does indeed look like there is a nice Police Box sized shape on the ground.

At time of writing I have got as far as Box J38 and I have a problem. The description given is "Southwest corner of junction of Epping New Road and Earls Path - High Beach" which is fair enough until you find the said place and realise it should say "north west corner" as per the picture.




Now what to do?

[Dalekoracle]

Well, the Med Archive does have a huge stack of hand drawn maps showing various road junctions pinpointing the location of the boxes exactly... but at one junction / box per A4 sheet the task was so daunting (with each scan taking well over a minute) that I just went for the list!

The policeboxes.co.uk website by Gavin Rymill (aka themindrobber) has been an ongoing project for him, and I started to help with the research quite late on - about six months or so ago. The research has been slow but the visit to the met was arranged so to aid our underdtanding of where the boxes was, so we could update the site more accurately and ideally expand on it with a lot more content. My time is being seriously impacted on with various Olympic projects and other events i am producing at the moment, but we hope that the map should be updated soon.

I've been looking at various map providers but Gav's approach is more "code" based, enabling him to use those rather nifty Police Box graphics... but manually coding each and every location takes a lot of time as each location has to be manually entered - no click and drop pin action for him unfortunately.

It would be cool to see the map you are working on Mark. Is there a link?

Mark D

[Mark]

Hi Mark, did you get my email? Took me longer than expected.

I remember visiting the Sheffield Archive and their police box folder (singular) had such a set of A4 drawings of police box locations.

I will happily put a link, when I figure that part out  . To be honest, my original plan was to make this list available via my mobile but it transpires Android based phones can't use "My places" info from Google Earth as yet although I am of the understanding that I Phones can. Bit odd as Android is actually part of Google (correct if wrong).

I was going to wait until I had finished it but help relocating any errors would be usefull, plus I haven't bothered with Police Posts yet. I have taken the approach that putting markers down using the birds eye view appears more accurate as when street view the markers seem to move about quite a lot on different views.

The 1945 aeriel view has been most useful on a number of boxes as the current street set up has altered which gives the boxes current location as the middle of the road on roundabouts for example.

Ultimately I would love to be able to have various icons to denote box variant, ARW sirens, etc, but the Holy Grail would be a Augmented Reality App that could put a ghosted image of the box (think time slips) over the actual area. People could go hunting boxes via the map and then be "rewarded" with the AR image.

I know nothing of making this a reality so just a thought for those who may have the ability and knowledge to make this possible.

I'll hammer out a few more locations tonight and tomorrow and post a link this time tomorrow for anyone to amend, find useful or other

[lorisarvendu]

At time of writing I have got as far as Box J38 and I have a problem. The description given is "Southwest corner of junction of Epping New Road and Earls Path - High Beach" which is fair enough until you find the said place and realise it should say "north west corner" as per the picture.

Well it's actually "southeast" on the location list, not southwest. But I agree that "northwest" seems to make more logical sense.  Perhaps it's simply a 1930s "typo"! However it's also worth considering that roundabouts didn't become widespread in the UK until the 1960s, and a rural junction like this would probably just be some kind of crossroads in in 1936 when the box was first sited (and the location description probably written).

Although the photograph might show a roundabout (it's inconclusive), I'll bet that's not the way things looked in the 30s, and judging by the way the roads intersect it might have been a bit more complex than just a straight crossroads.  I'd be willing to bet that the course of all four roads has been slightly altered (and the corners sliced off), because I think if you put the box back now, it would indeed end up being in the middle of the road round (probably at about 11 o'clock).

[Rassilons Rod]

Is it not also possible that there was only the two roads listed, at that time? Could the other two roads on the roundabout be entirely new roads?

[lorisarvendu]

Well there's only three roads there.  Epping New Road (the A104) runs SW to NE, Earl's Path joins it from the Southeast, and turns into "Cross Roads" on the other side of the A104, although back in the 30s it may be that it was still known as Earl's Path.

If Earl's Path didn't cross the A104, then the box would have been listed as "Epping New Road, west, opposite Earl's Path".  Also, I think that fact of the name "Cross Roads" kind of gives us a clue of how this road junction used to be.

Of course there is another possibility.  We don't know when the photo above was taken, but it could have been after the box could have been moved from it's original location on the southeast corner of the junction, and simply not recorded in the list.

Since the list is all the information that exists, unless someone finds a photograph with the box on the diagonally opposite side of the crossroads, then we will never know.

At any rate, as far as the actual physical location goes, the comparison between the original photo and Google is conclusive proof, meaning the list is in error.

[Mark]

I suppose it depends when the lists were made. My guess is that the lists were typed up in the 70's from original documents which would have been used by each district and added to as needed such as when boxes were moved, removed etc.

As for the Epping Forrest box I did mean Southeast I just typed rather than thought  

I agree that the junction did probably change at some point from a straight forward junction to a roundabout although the roundabout does show up on the 1945 Google Earth images. It is very difficult to see any evidence from the available google streetview pictures such as gpo manhole covers etc.

Maybe the box was moved from it's location on the Southeast side to the Northwest as in the picture and the list not updated as "resited", or maybe the list was mistyped in the firstplace?

[Mark]

As in 1945

[Rassilons Rod]

That's pretty cool, I did not know you could do that. I wonder how Google managed to do that...

[Mark]

It only appeared (correction, I only noticed it  ) about a month ago.

I wondered if they were something to do with the war?

The resolution is pretty rubbish at street level but very occasional, if the shadows are at the right angle and you squint a little, you can make out what could be a police box location when you tie it with the list.

The coverage is pretty good though, but not complete. Maybe there is more to come when it has been digitised?

[Mark]

Well just for Mark D (it's the list he found after all), I was going to share the locations I have been mapping on Google Earth however I can't seem to share.

When I click on "share/post" I get an error message courtesy of Google Earth. Nice one. I'm going to play around (not in an exciting way ), and see if I can sort this problem out. I am up to box P14 although there are a few boxes that I haven't listed due to "insufficient data, master".

When I get this sorted I would appreciate any amendments or suggestions.

[Mark]

Right, still having problems figuring out how to share these Google Earth Police Box locations. For some reason it really doesn't want me to share these via a post. For now until I figure out a way of doing this (or someone can point me in the right direction!) if you want a copy email me your email and I send you the file (It lets me do that!).

As I said, the list isn't finished yet and there are some boxes I havn't managed to place yet.