GENUKI Contents

Church Database

Introduction

The information on this page is aimed at the county page developers and describes the files that they use and which are used to build the database. These files are not accessible on the web and the information in them is closely related to the database content but is not always in the same format that users see.

Data structure

churches.csv file format

The raw data is maintained as comma separated text files, with a separate file for each county. The recommended technique is to use Excel to view and edit this file, but always saving it back in csv format. Excel lets you easily view the data in tabular format and to sort it as required. The most convenient order is probably Place, Denomination, Dedication. You can have a line of headings at the top of your columns and the program that builds the database will ignore any line in which the grid reference field contains the characters Gridref, so use that in any headings line.

The fields in churches.csv are as follows. The database upload program makes some minor adjustments to these fields and adds some more hidden ones based on your data for use in the search process. If you maintain your csv file using Excel, the following letters are those that Excel uses to identify the columns.

1. The 3 character Chapman code for your county (upper case). This used by the search routines and provides links to the county page on search lists and to provide contact details.

2. The OS grid reference of the church [XXnnnnnn or XXnnnnnnnnnn (upper case)]. The initial gridrefs are approximate ones, just giving the Km square on the map and so additional zeroes were added to convert it to the traditioanl 8 character gridref and the approximate flag set to Yes.

   The standard eight character grid references do not give a fine enough resolution when used with the sites such as streetmap.co.uk as sometimes the arrow on the map appears on the wrong side of the street. So there is also the option of providing a very exact gridref using twelve chars instead of the usual eight which are also still be supported. So SD371271 can now appear as SD3710027100.

   If you are adding a new church and don't know its location, then use the gridref for the place taken from the gazetteer. Adjust it so that it is easily recognisable as approximate [ XXnn0nn0 ] and also set the approximate field to Yes.

   A useful source of church gridrefs is "Dove's Guide" for bellringers.

3. Yes or No indicating whether the gridref is an approximate one. For all the Yes/No fields the upload program is quite flexible as it just looks for an upper case Y anywhere within the field. If it finds one then it treats it as Yes, anything else including an empty field is treated as No.

4. The place name.

5. The URL for your town/parish page covering the above place name. This is used to provide the 'Up Arrow' link on final web page giving details of the church.

6. The dedication (where there is one).

7. The URL of a GENUKI page specifically for the church which is displayed instead of the generic page giving details of the church. Leave this blank until you need to create a unique page for the church.

8. The name of the street where the church is located. Obviously this is there to help people find the church if they want to visit it, but if the church has no dedication then this is frequently used to refer to the church. E.g. compare "St.John's" or "St.Peter's" with "Park Street Methodist". If this is a rural area without a street name then you can enter a single space character. This prevents questions appearing in the Help area asking for a street name.

9. A code used to group the denominations by type. This is only ever used internally for searching. The next field with the detailed denomination is always used in the displays provided to the user.

   This generic code is used in searches to look for broad types of church e.g. Methodist instead of all the possible variations e.g. Wesleyan Methodist, Primitive Methodist etc. etc. The ONLY codes that can be used are those in the search menu on the churches web page i.e.

   ANG	Anglican church (CofE, CofS, CinW etc.) For backward compatibility only. The upload program now converts all ANG values to EST.
   EST	Established church (CofE, CofS, CinW etc.)
   BAPT	Baptist.
   CONG	Congregational or Independent
   IND	Independent For backward compatibility only. The upload program now converts all IND values to CONG.
   JEW	Jewish
   METH	Methodist
   PBY	Presbyterian
   RC	Roman Catholic and any specials.
   SEC	Secession churches which is the usual term for those that seceded from the C of S. This includes Free Church of Scotland which my experts tell me that although it seceded later than the rest and was a large group, it is usually grouped as a secession church.
   EPIS	Episcopal Church of Scotland
   OTHER	Other

   I used the denominations of Lancs churches that I already have in the database to produce this initial list. It obviously needs expanding especially for Scotland and anywhere else with different denominations. So please get back to me with suggested additions. Note that we are not trying to produce a list of every denomination, this is to sub-divide them in to similar groups to make it easier for users to find a church that may be useful from our database. So you need to see which types can be grouped together, and if there is just one or two of a denomination which doesn't warrant there own entry in this list, then just code them under 'OTHER'.

10. The exact denomination e.g. Methodist New Connexion. This is what is shown on the web pages generated rather than the code in the field above. Many denominations have split and regrouped over the years so put in the one that you think will me most useful. This is likely to be the original denomination rather than the broader group when they recombine later. However don't take this too literally and put all the old Anglican churches down as Roman Catholic :-)

11. The founding date of the church. If you don't know put 1. If a user knows when an event took place, this field can be used to exclude churches from the list presented to them.

    More information about dates.

    This field is used to construct another field internal to the final database which is used when searching by date.

12. The closing date of the church. Use 9998 as the default value for new entries.

    More information about dates.

    This field is used to construct another field internal to the final database which is used when searching by date.

13. The URL for a picture of the church. This is just for the image itself and is used on the final results page. E.g. click here and select 'Sacred Heart' for an example.

    Please be aware of copyright and don't just grab any image. As there is no way of in this system of relating a web image to the originator, don't link to any image you you find on somebody else's site.

    There are subsequent fields that can be used to display copyright information, and usage conditions etc. There is also a separate facility to include a separate section of text under the picture which is specific to the county where you can put any particular usage conditions. This text is common to all pictures for churches in that county. Held in /big/churchdb/conditions/xxx where xxx=Chapman code.

14. The URL for the church's own web page. If you have done a search and can't find one, then enter a single N.

15. Y or N indicating whether the church has ever had a graveyard. If present it generates some appropriate text under the Cemeteries heading and will also be used to enable searches for burial places.

16. Y or N indicating whether the distinct page for the church has a Church History section. This is something only used within the database for generating Help messages. This field is only here so that there is central list of what has been added to individual web pages that have been written and avoids having to look at them individually.

17. Y or N indicating whether the distinct page for the church has a Church Records section. Usage as in previous field.
18. The name of the person holding the copyright to the picture whose URL is provided in the field above. This is put appropriate text under the picture that is displayed. If you don't want anything to appear, just leave this field blank.

    Another alternative where you have a group of church pictures with similar access conditions use a special code which is used to put specific text that you want including under the picture. E.g. If it is a picture of a church long ago demolished in an image library, you may have negotiated rights to link to it with additional text acknowledging the fact. The code used here must first be provided by Phil to relate to a specific file on the server which can hold whatever text is required, such as acknowledgement, usage rights, links to the library etc.

Sources of information

• Changes in placenames, some local district names have changed over time.
• Street names have sometimes changed over time.
• If a church is on the corner of two streets then different sources may use either street name.
• Modern directories and listings frequently provide the address of the minister, and not the church itself.
• Churches with a dedication are much easer to identify but sometimes they do change.
• In recent times many churches have closed and the current name may be St. xxxx and St yyyyy. This may be the original name but frequently it is the name of one church with the name of the closed one as well and you have to work out which is which.
• Over the years the denomination may have changed e.g. if it was originally Independant then at the end of the 19th century it is likely to be described as Congregational.
• In listings of register holdings the description will hopefully give a distinct unique reference to identify the church. However it may contain just xxxxx Methodist church. This may be enough to uniquely identify it within that set, but what if there was some other Methodist church in that place for which no records survive?

The best starting point is usually the lists published by record offices detailing their holdings of parish registers. That will give you the basic infrastructure of the older churches. The areas that will be most deficient will be those churches that haven't deposited registers and many of the non-conformists will be in this group. N.B. Don't fall into the trap of using the earliest date in the deposited registers as the founding date of the church. You need to use other sources to check that so use the form <nnnn.

Then start looking at directories, and to start with one dated around 1900 should give most of the churches that are normally used for research. Later than that you will get s few more but lose more as especially non-conformists started to combine. You will probably find that the Anglican and larger/older churches of other faiths are covered reasonably well and more detail is given in the large towns. But for smaller places you may get something like. "There are also Wesleyan, and Primitive Methodist chapels".

Then of course there are likely to be websites that will help and are particularly useful for finding churches founded fairly recently. Try a search engine and look for "xxxx diocese" and that should locate details of Anglican and Catholic churches. The amount of information present will vary. Addresses may be those of the minister, dates may be of the church building, and watch out for joint benefices where some churches have had to close. For other churches using the old term of non-conformist the web information is not as useful as with thse there has tended to be a lot of joining back together and you see the present structure and names and it isn't easy matching that with the older individual churches.

Order of construction

1. Add entries for churches in lists of deposited records, using approximate gridrefs from the gazetter.
2. Use a gazetteer from around 1900 to add in the many without deposited records. When this has been done you should have a good framework containing a high proportion of the churches in your county.
3. Then ask for people with local knowledge to give you the exact location of the church, whether it is still open, and the street on which it is located. Switch on the facility for the search pages to ask for help as this makes it easy see what is required in the lists of churches that the search pages produce.
4. Only start building individual pages for each church once you have the basic information including a precise location as this will miminimise the number of changes that need to be made to them. The best way to create a page is simply to search for it on the web, and to save the page that is automatically generated. Only ask for further information such as where records are deposited when you are ready to create individual pages.

New/moved churches

Viewing auto-generated pages when individual church pages are in use