Not the Kent one!
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashford,_Surrey
Currently called Ashford (Middlesex) in Waze. Middlesex is the historic county, Surrey the actual one. Wikipedia suggests it’s referred to as Ashford (Middlesex). Views?
I’d call it Ashford (Not Kent) 
I was going to check on www.gazetteer.co.uk, but it’s not available.
Ordnance Survey is your next best resource, lists it as in Surrey.
If it helps I looked up a few addresses online and they seem to mostly use Middlesex.
I know from experience too that the older ones tend to stick around, I lived in Orpington for years, and everyone says Orpington Kent, when it hasn’t really been Kent for a long time.
That’s the problem, technically it’s in Surrey but the accepted practice is Middlesex. Of course, we’re only adding the county to avoid smudges so I’ll just leave it well alone!
Addresses probably will refer to it as Middlesex, as this was the Postal County which was retained for legacy use after the administrative county itself was removed. Also, local inertia will mean that many people in and around the area still refer to it as Middlesex even if they’re talking about the admininstrative county rather than the postal county - even a recent addition to the population such as myself (moved into the former Middlesex area 6 years ago) would more likely than not use Middlesex rather than whatever is technically/legally/etc correct, simply because we hear the name used so often by other people and organisations.
For the specific case of Ashford, it probably doesn’t help that Ashford Hospital is one of the main sites my employer uses for equipment field trials, and all our documentation refers to it as “Ashford (Middlesex)” to differentiate it from one of our big customers who, yes you’ve guessed it, are based in Ashford (Kent)…
Personally, although Middlesex seems to be the more commonly used term to refer to locations in this area, I’d go with Surrey simply because I don’t feel comfortable with the idea of propagating a deprecated piece of data in a newly created database.
I agree, except we already have the Middlesex version …
…and the Surrey version too. Granted, there only appears to be a single segment which uses Surrey (https://world.waze.com/editor/?lon=-0.48067&lat=51.42569&zoom=4&layers=BFTFTTTFTTFTFFTTTTTTFT), but it’s enough for both suffixes to appear on the map.
Perhaps in this instance, given the number of segments using the Middlesex suffix, it would be preferable to rename this solitary Surrey one (*), but where new renaming efforts throw up ambiguities which haven’t already been addressed (or where sufficiently few existing segments have been suffixed such that changing them all over to be consistent wouldn’t be an onerous task), I suggest we use whatever suffix makes sense based on what someone would see if they opened up a current map.
- and perhaps for safety, also give names to the few remaining un-named segments in the area, to dissuade anyone else from reintroducing the Surrey suffix.
All very sensible. I’ve been clearing up the towns in this area already to prevent the same city popping up with different names. Any other people with views on this particular occurrence?
Hi,
The only Ashford I know is in Kent so I’ll shut my mouth!
Des. . .
LOL - Two ashfords in Devon…
Ashford SS5335 Devon Devon
Ashford SU1314 Hampshire Hants
Ashford SX6848 Devon Devon
Ashford TQ0671 Middlesex Surrey
Ashford TR0042 Kent Kent
Gazatteer has the county as Middlesex and admin county as Surrey.
Hi,
Ahhh they’re back. Paid their hosting bill then… 
Des. . .
Meanwhile, the OS OpenData Gazetteer data, unsurprisingly, leaves out the postal counties and simply lists it as being in Surrey. Also at odds with the Gazetteer website, it additionally lists another Ashford in Powys…
As I now work at Royal Mail I’d say stick it in as Midsx or whatever the abbreviation is on the wiki. The Kent one is just Ashford, it’s bigger and has rail links to the continent so feel it should be the main one.
It may now be Surrey, but as with Bromley, many still refer to it as being in Kent, same with Dagenham and Essex.
It’s all very confusing, legacy postal districts or up to date official administrative area hmm…
We need to decide on this kind of thing once and for all.
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Actually, considering legal and administrative things, Surrey. I’m as confused as you lot, but yeah whatever 
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Agree it’s got to be (Middx). On the trains, it’s Ashford (Middx). When we had an office in Staines, the postal address was, and remains, Middlesex.
For Middle England, Middlesex will still exist as a county despite Government meddling! They not renamed the MCC yet
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As I mentioned above, I’d generally prefer to stick with what someone would see if they opened up a current map of the area. Having now just refreshed my memory as to the contents of the OS gazetteer data and remembered that I once had (possibly still do have…) plans to incorporate that into the OS script, I’d suggest this is further reason to stick with the current rather than the historical.
If the data we add can be pulled directly from, or at least verified against, the relevant OpenData fileset, we know that the end result of our naming efforts will then be at least as good as the OS data, and as someone who’s admired and respected the output of the OS since I was old enough to read a map I reckon that being at least as good as them would be plenty good enough for Waze.
Now if only Waze would give us a proper county field…
Then going by the gazetteer it’d be Middx but does OS show Middx or Surrey?
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I suppose it’s all a silly argument in some ways since we’re only arguing about what is shown on the map not the lookups (which show what?). Whoever started this discussion?
The Gazetteer site shows it as both Middlesex (in the historic county column) and as Surrey (in the administrative county column). The OS OpenData Gazetteer only lists administrative counties and so Middlesex is nowhere to be seen.
And if WME correctly handled the use of the same location name in different parts of the country, rather than forcing us to adopt annoying renaming schemes to work around its limitations, then we wouldn’t need to give it a second thought.
An address lookup on the live map reckons it’s in Surrey, by the way…