Wood Lane is possibly the original heart of Gedling Village (although after a talk & a meal with the elders of the local tribe last Wednesday, 3 May, I’m moving that node close to the 1,000-year-old All Hallows Church, near the area that the villagers themselves call “Gedling Village”). The average recent prices of houses in Wood Lane is ~£500,000 GBP (€590,000 EUR; $650,000 USD), which is 3 or 4 times a typical price for Nottingham. Much of the area is a Private Road (unadopted), but I’ve got to say that the folks there are most welcoming & not at all snooty (my grandkids & their mum visited me this last Bank Holiday and, after looking at some recent Diary postings, we all decided to take Buddy, their dog, in a walk through Gedling House Woods & Meadows, and had a fantastic time making friends with other, local dogs; Buddy enjoyed it as well).

I had a similar warm welcome & assistance from Dr Soar at Gedling Manor:–

The house was described by Charles Gerring in 1908 as “at one time a shooting-box of the Earls of Chesterfield” (hunting lodge), and was visited by Kings of England for that purpose. Whilst I have not yet found a construction date for the current building, archives for the Manor date back to 1401. The estate that contained the current house passed by descent to the Earl of Carnarvon, and was sold on 25 March 1901 to Mr Weston Fulford Marriott Webb. 2 years later the Manor house & grounds (the latter of which was much larger than now) were sold to Colonel William Henry Blackburn.

Some of the grounds were used to build a Grammar School, and the building has passed through a number of hands, most recently being an old-folks home. It is now owned by Dr Soar, who has sold parts as Mews & rented out other parts.

I wish that I could say that the helpful attitude described above also applied to the folks that run Carlton-Le-Willows Academy (a large co-educational comprehensive school with 1350+ pupils, founded in 1973 by the amalgamation of two grammar and two secondary modern schools), but my recent experience sadly suggests not:–

I called in during lunch and, to be fair, did not really have any difficulty or delays obtaining a copy of their school magazine as to obtain contact info. End of lunch rang out as I left & the pupils returned indoors, so I paused to take as good a photo as I could of the front of the school buildings to add to the map. 10 minutes later, as I was trying to find a number on the School bungalow, I heard the School Secretary outside of that hedge calling for me; she demanded that I delete the photo.

I was within private grounds so raised few objections (it was their loss, not mine). My new phone is Android 6 (Marshmallow), and I find it far less intuitive to administrate than the previous model, which used Android Kit-Kat. Normally, I do most of the file admin for the ’phone via my home computer, but they were not willing to allow me to leave without deleting the photo, and I did not consider the fuss worth the bother.

After a short while we were joined by the Director of Safeguarding, an ex-copper who took himself very seriously indeed, and kept threatening to call the police. In the end I found myself in a small room with 4 other adults; one of them was the school IT guy, and he was actually the helpful one as I tried desperately to discover where the final dupe copy of the photo was located (‘/DCIM/Camera/’ is the answer; DCIM==“Digital Camera Images”). The DoS asked for my home address, but he got short shrift from me on that.

Finally, an hour after arriving, I was escorted from the property by the DoS. Yet another bruising experience whilst mapping from middle-class folks with an elevated sense of their own importance.

For the record:–

• Photographs taken from public property (such as a public road) are the property of the photographer and, in general, zero people can object to such photographs (see this Metropolitan Police Advice and unofficial compendium of advice).
• Photographs taken on private property require permission from the land-owner.
• The police are supposed to get involved with preventing criminal activity. Taking a photo is NOT a criminal act, and for this reason the DoS was out-of-order (he also knew from my reaction that I knew this).
• No-one can remove your photo equipment from you, or force you to delete photographs that you have taken (although that will not stop some from trying to do either or both).

• In order to force you to identify yourself, or to detain you, or search your person or belongings, the Police need to place you under arrest. That requires due cause (a reasonable suspicion that the person has engaged in criminal activity) and has to follow a specified format (including reading you your rights, something that those reading this will have seen many times on TV). Mapping is not yet a criminal activity so, after calmly explaining what you are doing, politely refuse to ID yourself/be searched and keep asking whether you are being detained or am under arrest; once they say “no” declare “in that case I’m free to go, am I not” (it is actually a statement, rather than a question), thank them for their time and depart.

• Oh yes. Please remember: IANAL.

Update 3 July 2022

Mapillary has changed it’s download URLs & therefore all links within my diaries that use photos stored in Mapillary are broken. I’m slowly going through to update them. The new URLs are terrifyingly long, but show OK on my screen (and I hope also on yours).