How to map a hall in a cathedral/church?

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1

A hall that doesnt serve a a religious purpose. Just a generic hall.

Thanks!

2

It depends on the purpose. If it’s a hall where people can make conference probably an amenity=conference_centre is correct, if it’s for some celebrations (dinners, weddings, etc.) probably it’s an amenity=events_venue

3

The most common tags, based on taginfo, are :

  • amenity=community_centre with community_centre=village_hall (nearly 4000 uses)
  • amenity=community_centre with community_centre=community_hall 800+ uses
  • amenity=community_hall on its own (401 uses)

Usage of church_hall in similar ways has much less frequent.

I’ve never been totally happy with the amenity=community_centre as a generic top level tag. Quite a few churches do run their hall and any other meeting rooms in this sort of way, but the majority do not.

I once spent a summer as acting resident warden for a church which rented meeting rooms. It’s quite a labour intensive process, with a requirement for both daytime and evening presence and regular cleaning rotas. My local church rents out the hall to groups who meet regularly (typically weekly) because they need the income to support the hall, but it is not in regular usage as a community resource. The major limitation to getting more income is that the kitchen is inadequate for many events, and as it is a historic building making such a change is expensive and onerous. Many non-conformist churches in the UK have a hall integrated in the church building (in Welsh chapels often behind the chapel itself) which also makes regular usage by outside groups awkward.

Thus I don’t think its accurate to group all church halls (and village halls) under the community centre key: some are and some aren’t, and some kind of tag would still be needed to discriminate between them. That said the key already encompasses quite a broad range of facilities. For instance “Salle des Fêtes” in French villages.

tl;dr: amenity=community_centre with community_centre=community_hall is probably the most widely used tag, but be aware there are nuances and issues which this tagging does not resolve.

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