Crazy Mary’s Hole and Nuncle Dicks are added to OS maps

LOCAL nicknames, including Crazy Mary’s Hole and Stinky Bay, have been added to an Ordnance Survey coastal map to help locate the stricken.

It is hoped that the change will improve communication between the public and marine rescue teams in emergency situations, helping responders to attend to callouts faster and iden- tify the precise locations of incidents.

Some 7,500 nicknames have been added to a private version of the mapping service that is used by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MPA).

These include Nuncle Dicks in Dorset, the Comedy Carpet in Lancashire, and Crazy Mary’s Hole, which is by a decommissioned lighthouse in Suffolk.

Just under 150 miles separate the two Stinky Bays on the map, one in the Western Isles, the other on the Cornwall coastline. A number of the locations are not covered by existing maps, or do not have internet coverage, which means a postcode cannot be looked up.

There are more than 500,000 coastal place names on the MCA version of the OS map, which is officially named FINTAN and now includes the thousands of colloquial terms that are used to refer to regional landmarks.

“We have a long history of supporting all the emergency services with our mapping data,” said Chris Chambers, head of OS National Mapping Services.

“It’s not just coastal areas that have alternative names, across the country people refer to many other locations with nicknames – from buildings to parks and roundabouts to road junctions. Our ambition, as part of our public duty, is to make the service accessible across every part of Great Britain to support all our emergency services.”

The MCA responded to more than 31,000 incidents in coastal areas across the UK between April 2019 and March 2020.

The agency has a total of 3,500 volunteers as part of the Coastguard Rescue Service, as well as a number of salaried coastguard personnel operating a search and rescue service from 10 different helicopter bases.