Talk:Ankh-Morpork Neighbourhoods

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SysOps :: this page probably should have an 's' on the end, Ankh-Morpork Neighbourhoods. Can this be changed?

Done --Sanity 14:51, 16 August 2006 (CEST)
Many thanks :) --mikecook 19:00, 16 August 2006 (CEST)

I really thought I better discuss what I've included in this article.

  • Is neighbourhood the correct terminology? How about Suburb, Village, District?
    • Village - As referred to in the books. "...soon encompassed the surrounding villages." DC
    • Neighbourhood seems okay, although they are former villages. AFAIK it's not common to keep calling them villages, and they aren't in the book. --Sanity 14:51, 16 August 2006 (CEST)
I didn't think village was appropriate for the same reasons. District would not work - I believe districts are run as local goverments and Suburbs would more likely be the bits outside of the city walls. --mikecook 19:00, 16 August 2006 (CEST)

The books do refer to New Ankh, which I've always associated with the urban sprawl outside the city walls? As the blurb in the Mapp points out, the area encompassed inside the walls, although it's where most of the action takes place, is way too small for a million people, and even those used to Hong Kong would think they were overcrowded were that the case... and most walled cities break out, after a few hundred years, into suburbs outside the walls. --AgProv 15:02, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

  • Are we ok to included images like I have here? Are there any copyright issues we need to worry about?
    • Have you done the image by yourself? In that case it should be no problem. I hope you add a translated version to the DiscWiki when the names are sorted out ;-) --Death 09:09, 18 July 2006 (CEST)
      • Yes I did the image myself. I created a vector graphics version of the Streets of Ankh-Morpork by scanning the map and then tracing over it with vectors (quite a number of weeks work for sure). Copyright can be confusing for sure. I guess we'll here about it if we do something wrong. --mikecook 15:11, 18 July 2006 (CEST)
        • If unsure, contact Stephen Briggs or Terry's agent, they'll know whether it's right or wrong. I'm sure that if you send a polite note they won't see any harm in it, but if they have to discover it themselves they could be less inclined to ne easy going. --Sanity 14:51, 16 August 2006 (CEST)
I'll drop Mr Briggs a note and see what he thinks. --mikecook 19:00, 16 August 2006 (CEST)
    • Take a look at the Rincewind pic on Wikipedia and the 'Fair Use' information. Can we also include images from Paul Kidby and other sources under a 'Fair Use' license? --mikecook 20:01, 19 July 2006 (CEST)
      • This work is copyrighted and unlicensed. It does not fall into one of the blanket fair use categories. However, it is believed that the use of this work in the article "Rincewind": [...] qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.(aside: US copyright law is very simple: Disney owns everything. Old Dickens) Reads like stealing to me and we shouldn't copy that behavior. However, we could just ask Paul Kidby for his permission to use his pictures (with an apropriate note) in the two Discworld Wikis. There are two pictures used in the design of the German wiki (not uploaded as wiki content) because we got his permission to use his pictures on our webpage some years ago. I didn't think that permission included uploading to a wiki hosted as part of our webpage. (But then wikis weren't invented back then.) --Death 16:11, 20 July 2006 (CEST)
      • Agree with Death here. --Sanity 14:51, 16 August 2006 (CEST)
  • Is it possible to find exactly what area each neighbourhood encompasses? Can we make educated guesses and publish that information here on the Wiki? ie Like I have done with the two 'possible' names, Speedwell and Five-Ways. This information can always be changed in the future if TP decides to tell us. Hopefully someone will find their real names in the books.


Help is certainly going to be needed to find out what the rest of the neighbourhoods are called and to what extent they cover. -- mikecook 19:52, 17 July 2006 (CEST)

  • I wish I had a Streets or a Mapp, but no. The Shades on this map looks very large compared to the Night Watch map and some descriptions. Is there any support for the idea that The Shades sometimes refers to the whole old city and sometimes to a smaller area within (where even the Watch doesn't go?) Old Dickens 13:15 EST 16 Aug 2006
    • The Shades are fairly large, yes. I'm not getting my copy of the AM map out, but as this is based on that map I don't doubt the size of the Shades. --Sanity 21:32, 16 August 2006 (CEST)

Even within the Shades their are differences of outlσσk and opinion. Vimes' birthplace on Cockbill Street is technically part of the Shades, but in context represents an area where pride among the desperately poor outweighs tendency to illegality - no Cockbill Street person would get involved in crime for fear of being shamed in the eyes of the neighbours if found out. So we have a law-abiding part of the Shades, a cut above the older more evil and immoral streets to its hubwards? --AgProv 21:55, 16 January 2011 (CET)

Ankh and Morpork

One thing I have wonder is what part is concidered Ankh and what part is conidered Morpork. I think that this information would be useful if added to this article. My guess is that Mopork is the right part of the city on the map. But I'm not sure since Ankh and Mopork hasn't been mentioned much in the later books. –Jeltz 12:46, 19 July 2006 (CEST)

Morpork is the part on the right side of the Ankh containing The Shades. --Death 12:56, 19 July 2006 (CEST)
Thanks. So the red part of the map where most of the action in the novels take place could simply be namned Morpork? But I don't think we know that for sure. –Jeltz 23:46, 19 July 2006 (CEST)
The The Discworld Companion mentions '...proud Ankh, Turnwise of the river, and pestilent Morpork on the Widdershins side...' --mikecook 00:54, 20 July 2006 (CEST)
Ankh is the richer part, it's where Vimes lives with Sybil now. --Sanity 14:51, 16 August 2006 (CEST)

Like Buda and Pest, depending on what side of the river you're on? It's also been pointed out that London is also a twin city, although the inhabitants are less imaginative and just refer to Narff and Sarfff. Religious enforcers called taxi drivers will usually point out the exact boundaries, ie "I'm not going sarfff of the river at THIS time of night, squire".--AgProv 15:02, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

The Question Marks

The one just to the right and below Dolly Sisters and the Wizards' Quarter. On the Mapp, and I think in one of the later Watch books, the great bare white streak is an area of cleared housing and general urban improvement caused by it having been Ground Zero for the Noble Dragon crashing to earth, having been bestd by Errol and blasted out of the sky by a sonic boom (which can't have done the building fabric much good, either). The note is that this area is awaiting development and is still effectively a bomb site, as a noble dragon crashing to earth cleared a LOT of ground. As you might expect, it's called "Dragon's Landing" or something like that.--AgProv 15:02, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Another thought occurs to me - from Men at Arms, we can infer that a lot of the Clay Lane/Quarry Lane area in the "south-east" of the city - "east" of the Shades and the meat markets/abbatoirs - is now pretty much exclusively a Troll enclave. So "Trolltown" needs to be clearly indicated on the city map? --AgProv 10:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Around Goosegate and Attic Bee Street: no less than three hospitals are named in this relatively small zone. (This is common on Roundworld: for instance, no less than four formerly independent hospitals, with their infrastructure of nurses' homes, pharmacies, teaching schools and other supporting industries such as funeral directors, are clustered around the Oxford Street area of Manchester.) Since this appears to be evolving as the medical care zone of the city, why not identify it with the older English word for such facilities: "Spitals", or "Spitalfields"? --AgProv 21:55, 16 January 2011 (CET)

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned and I haven't noticed it: Could the regions be such as those on the Discworld Ankh-Morpork Boardgame? Would happily upload the relevant info if you think it would help. --Verity (talk) 22:29, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

The area between the Shades and the river is the dwarf quarter. "But more lights than you'd expect to see around Cable and Sheer, the part of the city that people like Captain Quirke referred to as 'tinytown'..."(MAA)
The Compleat Ankh-Morpork also mentions a dwarf quarter in that area. "This is a short walk of about a mile starting in the Apothecary Gardens on the Ankh side of the river. There are further opportunities to observe the architectural curiosities of B.S. Johnson, and you will cross the river on the renowned Misbegot Bridge. The walk passes through the dwarf quarter of the city and their busy market in Treacle Mine Road is well worth exploring."(CAM)
The city guide mentions many dwarfish shops and other things in the quarter, for example the Dwarf Bread Museum in Whirligig Alley, Gimlet's Hole Food Delicatessen in Cable Street and The Knocker Man Smiles on the corner of Lobsneaks and Mincing Street. --KlatchianGuy (talk) 09:58, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

New Ankh

There is a clear inference in the books that Harry King's recycling facilities, which are noisome even by Ankh-Morpork standards and which require a large amount of free land, are situated both upwind and upriver of the old walled city. This makes them the first location outside the old walled city to regularly appear in the books.

A suggestion for their location is that these are situated Hubwards of the city, and are accessed via either Water Gate (for river-borne traffic) and Least Gate (for honey-carts and similar leaving by road. There is a reference somewhere to massive compost heaps situated close to the river where garden-minded citizens may fill a sack for tenpence.

A character called Gerald Leastways appears in Night Watch. It is possible that he derives his name from a pedigree drawn in the Least Gate area of the city. Could we speculate - although this is only a supposition based on an inference - that where Pallant Street leaves the old walled city at Least Gate, when it enters New Ankh, it might well change its name to Least Way? (that is, the street and district on the other side of the wall from Least Gate.) Ankh-Morporkians being nothing if not prosaic, "Leastways" would then become a descriptive name for one born and brought up in the area.

This may become a template for all the city's main roads as they pass through the city wall - which at the time of writing has not been superceded by an even larger and longer city wall further out. (It is probably the case that Ankh-Morpork, like the European cities it is based on, has reached a stage where building walls around itself has become obselescent, having already outgrown at least two which are now swallowed up inside itself as growth becomes inexorable.)

We therefore might expect the continuation of Kicklebury Street as it passes through the Limping Gate to become, perhaps, Limping Street or Limping Way. Upper Broadway starts at the Un-named Gate: its continuation on the other side might be Sto Helit Way, or the Helitian Road (known to citizens as the Road to Hels?) Losing Street, inside the city, begins at the Onion Gate. Onion Road?

Pigsty Hill leads to the Shambling Gate - only right and proper, as this is the drovers' route from the Chalk Country to the Shambles, the slaughterhouse district. Therefore the continuation road from the gate is Drovers' Way? And given that drovers with large herds need to be able to stable them over night, especially if they arrive after the city gates are closed, this area of New Ankh might be called Droversfields?

Dimwell Street begins at Traitors' Gate. Upper Dimwell? New Dimwell Road?

Park Lane/Edgeway Road lead to the Rimward Gate. Rimwards Road?

King's Way/Dark Gate/King's Down/ Deosil Gate (in order from the river outwards) are the a recognised road for Quirm. If we use a little Quirmian and suggest the original name might have been Rue Des Rois", what about "Ruddyroy Street" as a local corruption?

The only caveat to the idea of city walls and fortifications becoming obselete and more expensive to build as the city gets larger and the line of wall longer (expensive to build, had to man, expensive to maintain and vulnerable to artillery) is that in the 17th and 18th centuries, many European cities adopted the new defensive philosophy of geometrically designed "star-forts" at strategic locations. These could safely be left unmanned and only garrisoned if there were real and pressing need. Those which needed a permanent garrison also served as useful barracks to keep the rough soldiery out of the way of citizens.

The principal castle of the Tump looks to be vulnerable and open to concerted attack from the north and west. What barbicans, skirting walls and other additional defences might have been built in to cover this weak spot - such as the star-forts of a later age?

What mediaeval city walls evolved into:- [1]

Jun 2023 Map Update

I have some difficulty with the new map apart from the oversized file, especially the oversized Unreal Estate, which seemed to be a small field in the hubward-by-turnwise corner of the university campus. The Hippo might be a convenient name for the surrounding area, but I don't think it's canonical, likewise gods quarter. New Brickyards is useful.
Is this the same Mr Cook who did the original? --Old Dickens (talk) 00:59, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

The new image appears to be based at least partly on the map from the Ankh-Morpork board game, which also includes “The Hippo” and “Longwall” as district names, in the same places. See for example this photo. It has the same number and general locations of districts, but not all the names match. The game’s regions were devised based on existing material, but also primarily for game purposes, so it’s not clear if all of them agree with canonical areas; I’ll compare to the original and updated official maps I have. I think the inspiration - which isn’t just the game - ought to be provided, at least? — Guybrush (talk) 22:47, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

There are myriad sources of external opinion, in peripherals, fan fiction, and our own discussion pages. Why should any one of them be adopted without canonical reference or explication? This derivative Ankh-Morpork board game seems to be the main source of the new version. --Old Dickens (talk) 04:19, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I also made the original image :)
The size of the file shown on the article page is actually only the 70KB "preview" version (400px-Ankh-Morpork-Neighbourhood.jpg). So this should not affect the page load speed, while still giving people a higher resolution image if they wish. I'll confess, it's been a long time since I really studied any this, so apologies if I've got stuff wrong.
"This derivative Ankh-Morpork board game seems to be the main source of the new version". The map is an SVG tracing of the official street map. The named areas are from the board game.
  • Unreal Estate is "oversized" - agreed. Perhaps the section above Broad Marsh can become part of Dolly Sisters?
  • Yes, New Brickfields, Hippo, Longwall do seem "convenient names" to use.
  • The Gods Quarter I'm also not happy with, I'd say that's only the top section. Maybe the bottom area could be Cockled Moor? (can't be any worse than The Hippo).
  • Other comments on this page give a strong argument for a Dwarves Quarter. I guess that would be the section between the river and Treacle Mine Road/Cheap Street/God Street, stopping at Short Street. However, that would then make The Scours much smaller, but seems reasonable.
Maybe we should also add a comment to the page noting that these districts are not conical? There's a lot of imprecise info which I guess people will interpret differently. I did what I thought was reasonable :) but, I'm happy to make whatever changes are agreed upon. MrCook (talk) 16:27, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps the easiest solution would be to state that the names are taken from the game and not canon; I don't know why we'd be publishing conjecture from any source as fact. I've made the same complaint in other areas and the problem is likely to grow as more vultures create travesties of The Author's work. --Old Dickens (talk) 01:58, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

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