Cornish beauty spot 'renamed' Stinky Bay to help emergency services

Stinky Bay in Cornwall, actually near Pentire outside Polzeath, is among dozens of place name nicknames to have made into an a new Vernacular Names Tool created by the Ordnance Survey created to help emergency service
Stinky Bay in Cornwall, actually near Pentire outside Polzeath, is among dozens of place name nicknames to have made into an a new Vernacular Names Tool created by the Ordnance Survey created to help emergency service -Credit:WikiCommons


Stinky Bay in Cornwall is among dozens of place name nicknames to have made into an a new database created to help emergency service. The unfortunately named area refers to Pentire, a bay area on the north coast near Polzeath, and has now been added the Vernacular Names Tool created by the Ordnance Survey (OS).

It joins Jabba the Hut, a distinctive beach hut in Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire, and the Drinking Dinosaur, a rock formation at Flamborough Head in East Yorkshire which resembles a long-necked dinosaur drinking from the sea. There is also Sausage Island, a popular rock for jumping off on the coast of north-west Wales, and Crazy Mary’s Hole, a deep ravine in Pakefield, Suffolk.

Altogether it is more than 9,000 place names known by their local nicknames which have been entered into the database as a way to make it easier for emergency services to pinpoint locations when called out to shout and every minute counts.

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Chief coastguard Peter Mizer said the tool is an "incredibly useful resource," adding: "It has allowed local knowledge to be shared across our operational network and there are examples where its use has improved the tasking of critical rescue assets. We are very proud to have played a significant role in its development and we are pleased to see it being made available to colleagues in other emergency services today."

The new system, called the Vernacular Names Tool, contains the nicknames of over 9,000 locations across the UK, with many being created and passed on by local communities.

The Eye of the Butt is a coastal landform which can be found in the Western Isles of Scotland, while those looking for Sausage Island should head to the north-west coast of Wales. Locations in Essex take a magical literary theme - Harry Potter Bridge can be found in Thurrock, while Peter Pan is a woodland area located in Southend.

The Princess Royal even got involved with the naming process. During a recent visit to the OS headquarters in Southampton, she added "the wedding cake" to the database, which is an alternative name for the Queen Victoria Memorial opposite Buckingham Palace.

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Mr Mizer said the original tool allowed users to upload the local name or nickname for a coastal feature to the database, alongside the accurate location or its existing geographic name. It was made to ensure that coastguard responders could get to emergencies, however their location was described, with greater confidence and speed. Control room staff are now able to simply type in a nickname and generate a precise location.

The Welsh Ambulance Service is a new user of the vernacular tool. Chris Jones, an emergency medical service administrator, said it is “really useful and very easy to use”. He continued: “We want to log as many vernacular names as we can so are exploring how the control room can do that now as well as starting to include this in control room induction training.

"The real value longer term will be ensuring that our ambulances will be able to get to the scene of an incident effectively with an accurate location provided by OS, no matter how it’s identified by a caller.”

The information from the tool will help to power the recently launched OS emergency services gazetteer – a maintained database of 1.3 million features across the UK, including roundabouts, hills and cliffs. It is designed to equip responders with the precise location information needed to act quickly during an emergency.

John Kimmance, managing director of OS national mapping services, said: "Wherever we live, we all have nicknames for local places – and uploading these into a database really could mean the difference between life and death on an emergency call – particularly for services called from outside their regional areas."