EVIDENCE BEFORE EXPLORATION

A record you can trace.

Every place links to its original source. The first collection uses official open heritage indexes, not scraped travel descriptions.

What “source-backed” means

The name, source identifier, supplied location and classification evidence are checked against the downloaded official index. It does not mean somebody visited the site. Current condition, opening hours and public access remain unverified unless a separate dated source establishes them.

English designation dates are not construction dates. Scottish county labels are retained as supplied and may describe historic counties. Launch areas are rectangular discovery windows, not administrative boundaries; they can include nearby places across a border.

Research and editorial standards

Thirty place pages now have separate historical interpretation and dated access research, supported by 78 linked evidence sources. Five guides connect those places into useful comparisons. This is desk research: no field inspection or direct operator contact is claimed. The remaining 618 entries are catalogue records, with current condition and access generally unknown.

We record disagreements, distinguish an entire attraction from its individual components, and do not automatically announce reopening when a closure date passes. Twenty-nine researched place pages meet our initial indexing threshold; the Goathland goods-shed identity remains under review. Fifteen short field notes remain available but are excluded from search indexing.

Operator websites are used for brief factual summaries and links, not copied descriptions or photographs. Their text and images are not assumed covered by the heritage datasets’ open licences. Each researched section links to the evidence supporting it. How to read our evidence.

Administrative boundaries

County and local-authority labels are matched against ONS Counties and Unitary Authorities (December 2025) boundaries, generalised to 20 metres. Unmatched coastal points remain unknown. These are separate from historic Scottish county names and our initial discovery windows.

Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Dataset · Licence.

Maps and postcode search

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence. Base map tiles are provided by OpenStreetMap under its tile usage policy. Report a base-map issue.

Postcode lookup uses Postcodes.io. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2025. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2025. Contains National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right 2025. Contains NRS data © Crown copyright and database right 2025. These credit years reproduce the provider’s published notice.

Only Great Britain postcode lookup is enabled. Northern Ireland commercial postcode reuse requires separate licensing. A postcode you submit is sent to Postcodes.io; the atlas does not save it.

Photography

Ribblehead Viaduct photograph by Michael D Beckwith, 6 June 2016, via Wikimedia Commons, dedicated under CC0 1.0. It illustrates rail engineering; its use does not imply public access to railway property.

Reuse and corrections

Open Government Licence terms permit commercial reuse with attribution. Preserve provider credits, source identifiers and the date of the data in downstream adaptations. This permission does not extend to provider logos, linked third-party photographs or all website text.

For a factual correction, use the original record link to contact the record keeper. This atlas is independent and is not endorsed by Historic England or Historic Environment Scotland.