An interactive map which shows the most famous people from towns across the district has revealed some surprising (and not so) results.

Rock musician Sir Rod Stewart was found to be Epping’s most researched resident, whilst snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan came top for Chigwell.

Digital publication website, The Pudding, used four years’ worth of Wikipedia search data to determine the top person associated in the UK to produce the map.

Creative duo journalist-engineer, Matt Daniels, and editor, Russell Goldenberg, are the brains behind the latest ‘visual essay’ which has garnered lots of interest.

Their latest creation was inspired from a spin-off version of their depiction of the USA’s most Wikipedia-ed residents.

“The top person fr0m each city was determined by using median pageviews (with a minimum of one-year traffic),” a statement on The Pudding’s website explained.

“We chose to include multiple occurrences for a single person because there is both no way to determine which is more accurate and people can “be from” multiple places.”

Other celebrities listed on the map included within Epping Forest was stand-up comedian Alan Davies for Loughton and singer-songwriter and composer Mark Knopfler.

East end criminal and author Roy “Mean Machine” Shaw was found to be Waltham Abbey’s most Wikipedia-ed resident, who lived in the town until his death in 2012.

Chipping Ongar holds the record for oldest recorded resident to appear within the district, Thomas Byles.

Born in 1870, the Catholic priest is most remembered for helping and comforting passengers as the Titanic sank to its icy fate 107 years ago.

When Mr Daniels explained how he managed to create the details of the interactive map, he said: “Among all of the mapping tools available, I’ve found Mapbox extremely useful for creative exploration without code, using Mapbox Studio, and then moving to full code-driven customization with Mapbox GL JS,

“But visualising thousands of cities on a map is difficult, 20th-century mapmakers relied on careful spacing and font sizing to display a dense amount of information.

“With interactivity at our fingertips, we used a method known as collision detection.

“This is especially useful at different zoom-levels, where white space opens up as we zoom in on the US, allowing for names to be displayed.”

To see who are the UK’s most Wikipedia-ed people are, visit: https://pudding.cool/2019/06/people-map-uk/