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Ghosts — Closed or Renamed Shops and Amenities in OpenStreetMap UK

From time to time a chain of stores either re-brands itself (perhaps as the result of a take-over or merger) or goes into administration and shuts down completely. Either way, formerly correctly tagged OSM objects will become out of date. This tool aims to list sets of such objects, to help mappers find and deal with these cases. As well as dealing with the individual instances, the fact that such objects remain a significant time after the stores have closed or been renamed, indicates a shortage of local mappers suggesting that the rest of the local area might need a re-survey too. The data in each of the active sets listed below is updated from OSM roughly once a week.

As well as the pages for each set linked from the table below, mappers may find the "Survey Me!" tool useful, which combines all the Ghosts data, along with data from a number of other tools, to provide details of locations that might benefit from a survey in a given area.

Set Type Instances Updated Age
Lloyds Pharmacy Closure 834 2024‑03‑23 4d
Carphone Warehouse Closure 111 2024‑03‑23 4d
TGI Fridays Rename 78 2024‑03‑23 4d
Thomas Cook Rename 70 2024‑03‑23 4d
M&Co Closure 58 2024‑03‑23 4d
Topshop / Topman Closure 50 2024‑03‑23 4d
Merkur Cashino Rename 46 2024‑03‑23 4d
Paperchase Closure 38 2024‑03‑23 4d
Harveys Furniture Closure 37 2024‑03‑23 4d
Fulton's Foods Closure 34 2024‑03‑23 4d
Plumb, Parts, Drain, Pipe & Climate Center Rename 34 2024‑03‑23 4d
OneBelow Rename 29 2024‑03‑23 4d
Eat Closure 24 2024‑03‑23 4d
T.M. Lewin Closure 20 2024‑03‑23 4d
Quicksilver Rename 18 2024‑03‑23 4d
Total Petrol Rename 17 2024‑03‑23 4d
Poundworld Closure 15 2024‑03‑23 4d
Burton Closure 14 2024‑03‑23 4d
Yorkshire / Clydesdale Bank Rename 14 2024‑03‑23 4d
Age Concern Rename 13 2024‑03‑23 4d
Jaeger Closure 11 2024‑03‑23 4d
STA Travel Closure 11 2024‑03‑23 4d
Mothercare Closure 10 2024‑03‑23 4d
Albemarle & Bond Closure 10 2024‑03‑23 4d
Debenhams Closure 9 2024‑03‑23 4d
Thomson Travel Agent Rename 8 2024‑03‑23 4d
Games Workshop Rename 7 2024‑03‑23 4d
TA Centres Rename 7 2024‑03‑23 4d
Karen Millen Closure 6 2024‑03‑23 4d
Brantano Closure 6 2024‑03‑23 4d
Coast Closure 5 2024‑03‑23 4d
Office Outlet Closure 4 2024‑03‑23 4d
Co-Operative Pharmacy Rename 3 2024‑03‑23 4d
Antler Closure 2 2024‑03‑23 4d
Beales Department Stores Closure 2 2024‑03‑23 4d
Toys R Us Closure 2 2024‑03‑23 4d
Wyevale Garden Centres Rename 1 2024‑03‑23 4d
Gala Bingo Rename 1 2024‑03‑23 4d
Little Chef Closure 1 2024‑03‑23 4d
Topaz Fuel Rename 0 2024‑03‑23 4d
Maplin Closure 0 2024‑03‑06 3w
Ipswich Building Society Rename 0 2024‑02‑02 7w
First Choice Travel Rename 0 2024‑02‑02 7w
Norwich & Peterborough Building Society Rename 0 2024‑01‑25 2m
Help The Aged Rename 0 2024‑01‑25 2m
Currys PC World Rename 0 2024‑01‑09 2m
Nobles Amusements Rename 0 2024‑01‑09 2m
Tesco Metro Rename 0 2024‑01‑09 2m
Cycle Republic Rename 0 2024‑01‑09 2m
Vaporized Rename 0 2024‑01‑09 2m
Phones 4U Closure 0 2024‑01‑09 2m
Flying Tiger Rename 0 2024‑01‑09 2m
That's Entertainment Closure 0 2024‑01‑09 2m
Staples Rename 0 2024‑01‑09 2m
Lloyds TSB Rename 0 2024‑01‑09 2m
Wilkinson Rename 0 2024‑01‑09 2m
Cheshire Building Society Rename 0 2023‑12‑08 3m
British Home Stores Closure 0 2023‑12‑08 3m
HSBC Rename 0 2023‑11‑19 4m
Orange and T-Mobile Rename 0 2023‑11‑19 4m
Cheltenham & Gloucester Rename 0 2023‑11‑19 4m
Dunfermline Building Society Rename 0 2023‑11‑19 4m
Jamie's Italian Closure 0 2023‑11‑19 4m
Total 1660

Mechanical Edits Warning: Many of the instances flagged above could be fixed by a bulk mechanical edit. There are two opposing view-points on whether this is a good idea. The first says that if we know something is wrong and can improve it, then we should. The other says that it is better to leave objects like this for local mappers, as it is good to review the object completely, and instances are a good indicator that the whole area could do with being re-surveyed. Whatever your views, the OSM Automated Edits Code of Conduct needs to be followed, so you would need to discuss — and get agreement — on any plans in the Talk GB Mailing List and/or Talk IE Mailing List before going ahead.

I am happy to receive suggestions for improvements to this tool and also ideas for additional sets of shops and amenities that could be added. Please get in touch via my OSM Profile. If you are suggesting a new set to be added, it is helpful if you can provide as much of the following information as possible:

  1. A full name (page title) and short name (graph key) for the set.
  2. A URL slug to use
  3. Whether it's a rename or a closure
  4. An overpass turbo query snippet to fetch the objects from OSM.
  5. Some descriptive text for the web page.

Examples of each of these bits of information can be found on the pages for the existing sets.

Data derived from OpenStreetMap data, © OpenStreetMap Contributors, licensed under Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL). XAPI courtesy of Overpass API.