I have some complicated addresses and buildings around Cardigan to deal with. I’ll start with one where the complications can be ignored (that’s what I did when I mapped them) and work my way up. I’m giving them all here in the hope that a cohesive strategy emerges that embraces all of them rather than contradictory ad hoc conflicting solutions.
The first problem is five terraced houses (row houses in Merkin). They were built by the same builder at the same time. These days they are known as 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9, North Road (the numbering sequence continues beyond them and the even numbers on the opposite side of the road shows that they are, indeed, on North Road as far as official postal addresses go), Some have house names: 1 is Clarington, 5 is North Gate house, 7 is Kilhue and 9 is Bryngwyn. And that’s how I’ve mapped them. However, they are also collectively known as Priory Terrace. These days not many people know them as Priory Terrace, and the words “Priory Terrace” are not in their official postal address, However, they are all Grade II buildings listed by Cadw (Welsh equivalent of Historic England) under the addresses 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 Priory Terrace rather than North Road. So wrap another building around the lot of them with just a common name or house name of Priory Terrace? Or use a relation somehoiw? Or just ignore the name Priory Terrace because it’s mainly historical?
The second problem affects official postal addresses. I haven’t even bothered adding them to the map yet because I can’t figure out a non-bad way of handling the addresses (I don’t add buildings without address details because that makes the task too much like painting by numbers). Quay Street (Stryd y Cei) runs east to west. At the east end of the street, on the south side, are numbers 1 and 2, then a church (no number). At the west end, on the north side, are 26, 25, 24, etc. Fairly normal, apart from the boustrophedon numbering.
The problem comes on the south side, after the church (which is a fairly new building compared to the surroundings and might have replaced 3 and 4). After the church comes Rook Terrace. A terrace of 5 houses, 4 of which were built by the same builder at the same time (and have Cadw listing), the fifth appears to be of a slightly different vintage. All five are collectively known as Rook Terrace and that is part of their official postal address. So there is 1 Rook Terrace, Quay Street and there is 1 Quay Street. Some of them have house names, so there is Roby, 2 Rook Terrace, Quay Street as well as 2 Quay Street. I can’t rename a section of Quay Street as Rook Terrace for two reasons: firstly, directly opposite them on the north side of the street are 16, 17, 18 and 19 Quay Street; secondly, continue further west and there are more buildings on Quay Street with official postal addresses of Quay Street.
The format of addresses doesn’t seem able to cope with stuff like this. I suppose I could pretend they were units of Rook Terrace, which is on Quay Street. But that isn’t the reality, they’re not units or flats but individual dwellings. Unlike Priory Terrace above, wrapping a building around them doesn’t fix up the postal addressing situation. I can’t come up with a way that reflects reality and would also let somebody get the correct postal address from the mapping data.
The third problem is Quay Street again. There are 3 houses, 24, 25 and 26 (all part of a terrace). These are separate houses, with separate doors. However, the Castle Cafe operates on the ground floor of 25 and 26 (each house has flats above the cafe) with an entrance at 26. The Cellar Bar operates in the basement of 24, 25 and 26 and shares a common entrance with the Castle Cafe. Current signage indicates that these were once the same business. However, in a lengthy Facebook chat with the guy running the Cellar Bar I learned that they are now separate businesses which overlap in their usage of three separate buildings and have a common entrance. (Just to complicate matters further, the Cellar Bar uses the ground floor of number 24 as a performer’s relaxation/changing room but as it’s not accessible by the public I’m ignoring that fact).
Anybody have good solutions to any of these problems?