Royal Commission on Historic Monuments Wales is running
“a national chapel survey, which will map active, closed, and converted chapels across Wales, capturing data on their sustainability, architectural value, and status of nationally protected assets.”
I’m wondering if it’s not too late to make sure the data is licensable for OSM.
Not sure what that would require:
possibly just RCHM releasing it under OdBL once the project completes; but maybe they won’t be able to if the data is infected beforehand.
My experience is that there are a *lot* of chapels on the Registrar General’s list that have long since converted to something else.
What I don’t know is how that relates to the OSM database: probably more faithful to ground reality, but possibly also overestimating numbers of PoW still in use.
In Wales OSM has 376building=chapel with no amenity tag, 282building=chapel with a current amenity=place_of_worship tag, and 12 that are now some other kind of amenity.
88 are just tagged building=chapel with no other tags and a further 8 just have source (likely often from out of copyright OS maps).
I don’t see any harm in reaching out to them (contact form here) and asking - if we don’t ask, we don’t get. I know they tend to release things under Crown copyright though.
I know there’s a few open notes from people who are uncertain whether chapel buildings are being used for worship or for residential.
RCAHMW states that only about 1500 of 6500 nonconformist chapels that were built in Wales are still open. This article also says that it will note if the chapels have been repurposed/adapted/demolished or left empty and abandoned.