Unlock places
Unlock the potential of the geographic information in your data.
Unlock places is a digital gazetteer service. Given a place name, it will return a geographic location and a suggested 'type' for the place. Look up a name with a simple HTTP GET request. Get back the results in XML / KML format (for viewing in a mapping client), in GeoJSON (for use in a Javascript based web application), GeoRSS or plain-text. Searches for names can be limited to a particular space, or filtered by the type of feature.
Unlock places is a "gazetteer service" rather than simply a gazetteer - it provides an interface to many sources of gazetteer data.
Map Viewer|API Documentation|Example Queries|FAQ|Feature Type Thesaurus
Open Data
Anyone is free to use the open data version of our service, based on place name information collected from geonames.org. Geonames.org provides point-based location data for millions of placenames worldwide. We synchronise with the latest geonames data every day.
Ordnance Survey Data
For academic use within the UK, we offer a gazetteer based on several Ordnance Survey provided data sources. This has much improved coverage, and includes detailed footprints for places, not simply approximate points. This data is accessible to UK academia through Digimap Collections. You need an API key to use the Ordnance Survey gazetteer, and can register for one through Digimap Collections.
Notice:
Tuesday evenings between 17.30 and 18.30 are 'at risk' periods for Digimap and Unlock services, which means there may be a risk that the services are unavailable during that hour.
