Talk:Denville Hall

Former names

From "Review of Local List of Buildings of Architectural or Historic Importance: Denville Hall". Hillingdon London Borough Council. May 2010.:

• Architectural: 1851, substantial building. Part of an old 16th C house called Maze Farm ... Only some parts of the original house survive.
• Historical: Part of Maze Farmhouse, owned by the renowned judge, Sir John Vaughan in C18.

Nikkimaria has edit-warred to twice remove "Maze Farm" from the 'Former names' line of the infobox, with edit summaries "rm unsourced/false/ambiguous" and "includes part of != is". I'd appreciate other opinions on whether Maze Farm should be listed as a former name of this building. --RexxS (talk) 01:27, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

The present building is a renovated version of Northwood, but cannot be said to be the same building as Maze Farm. At best, we could say that Maze Farm is a portion of the building; to include that as a "former name" in the infobox, though, would be misleading. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:10, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

And yet the building has been "heavily extended" since 1926, and Northwood Hall is only "a portion" of the present structure. By your argument Northwood Hall cannot be said to be the same building as Denville Hall - although it clearly is. So at what point does a building cease to be the same building and become something else? 30% changed? 50%? 80%? where? In fact you have no idea how much of Maze Farm is still part of today's building. We cannot rely on editor's own guesswork and we should stick to the sources. Maze Farm is clearly mentioned in the sources as the name of the building from the 16th to the 18th century and has as much currency for the name of the building as any other name subsequently used. --RexxS (talk) 12:48, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

We can certainly discuss removing the Northwood name as well, as the infobox should avoid trying to oversimplify such a philosophical argument. But if it requires guesswork on either side to determine whether a field belongs or is accurate, it should be excluded. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:47, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, I was pointing out that you were doing the guesswork by picking one former name for inclusion and not another. I disagree with your conclusion though; if the names are there in the sources, we should be reporting them - as we do in the article now. Nevertheless, I do have some sympathy with your suggestion that "former names" are insufficiently important to this particular building to deserve a place in the infobox, because most of the article deals with its current incarnation as Denville Hall. I suspect there's no universal rule to determine what are key facts - we just have to duke it out on each article. I'm going to enjoy my Xmas now and I hope you do the same. Let's give it a few days to see if anybody else comments; we can always ask for a third opinion if not. --RexxS (talk) 18:39, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Having never edited this article, but having worked on some NRHP articles on USA locations, what I can say is that local practice that can be sourced should be acknowledged where possible, and the infobox is certainly appropriate if consensus of active editors -especially if they are in-country to the location - should settle the matter. Often a building or place is referred to locally by its "old" name for decades even if other names are used later. I see that the former name is sourced here. My suggestion is to look at reliable third party sources to see how pervasive the old name was if it is used generally by the locals to this day (or at least, if used well past the expansion of the building). For example, though the infobox is very different and so the example is not perfect, the main building of the Lewis and Clark County Hospital Historic District is called the "Old Cooney Home" by everyone in town. If anyone said "Lewis and Clark County Hospital Historic District" you'd get a blank stare. Montanabw^(talk) 20:51, 25 December 2013 (UTC)