the parish website scheme: Filling out the form
OS Grid Reference
One of the things that people often forget on church websites is that, having told people when their services are held, they need to tell people how to get there. Unfortunately, some churches don’t have postcodes, so we have to use OS grid references to locate churches. On the final website, this will allow people to click on the grid reference to see a map showing where the church is located.
The grid reference should have been automatically filled in for you, but there are a small number of churches where we don’t have valid grid references.
What do to if you don’t have a grid reference, but do have a postcode…
If you don’t see a grid reference filled in, then you need to find out the grid reference of your church. If you know the postcode, you can convert this to a grid reference by going to http://www.nearby.org.uk/coord-entry.html and entering the postcode into the "UK Postcode" box (scroll down to see this).
This will give you a grid reference that’s slightly too detailed – ST15287943 in this case (see below). To simplify this, just remove the 4th and 8th numbers, so you get ST152794 in this case. You can now close the window, return to the form and enter your grid reference.
Please note that you should enter the grid reference without any spaces, otherwise the system will not be able to add the automatic link to a map.
What to do if you don’t have a grid reference, or a postcode
The easiest way to do this is to click on the link in the form that says “If you need to find the OS Reference of your church, click here”. This will open up a website called multimap in another browser window.
Once in multimap, enter the name of something or somewhere close to your church in the "find a map" box, as pictured. If the church is in an urban setting, a street name is ideal, but in rural areas, you will probably need to use the name of the nearest village.
Use the tools shown to the right to zoom in (that’s the + and – signs on the bar) and scroll left/right/up/down (that’s the <^>v symbols at the top of the bar) and find your church.
The area in the red circle on the map is the area for which the map reference will be given so if this isn’t close enough, try searching for a road name or place name that you can see closer.
Once the red circle is in the right place, scroll down, and to the bottom right of the map, you will see the grid reference. Once you have copied this, you can close the window and return to the form and fill it in.
