Can you help us collect accurate Blue Plaque data?

One of the joys of walking in a city – rather than speeding along in a car or taxi, or subjecting yourself to a troglodytic life on an underground system – is that you can take things in as you walk by.

Spotting a blue plaque on a building can completely change your perspective of a street – transport you back in time and make you contemplate how much has changed over the intervening years.

We’d love to upload blue plaques onto our mapping, and therefore help make our walking routes more engaging.

The challenge we face is that we need very accurate locations for them. Listings for blue plaques tend to mention quite vague locations – sometimes a building name, sometimes a street name (with or without a number) and sometimes a postcode.

But for us to be able to say “…you’ll pass the Blue Plaque for Sylvia Pankhurst…” in our written directions, we need to make sure we’ve got it in just the right place.

We’re therefore looking for people who could help us collect as many plaques as possible:

• An accurate location, ideally including x/y co–ordinates and street name/number
• A close–up photo
• Any other supplementary information you can find

While London has the most well–known scheme, we know of others in Birmingham and Leeds. No doubt there are many more!

Please get in touch if you think you could help us do this. We think someone on a bike should be able to get through quite a lot of them relatively quickly.