![\"House](\"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/minusone.jpg\")
\nA few of my previous blog posts have been about quirks in the UK postal address system. As a result of these posts being moderately popular, people have contacted me to tell me about other such quirks. This pleases me greatly – I like quirks.<\/p>\n
Mmmmm quirks.<\/p>\n
Also, since finding the HM Land Registry property sales data, I’ve discovered some other vaguely interesting stuff, so I thought that I’d collate all this information into one big blog post of address-based quirky goodness.<\/p>\n
I promise this will be the last address-related thing for a while. If I discover more quirks, I’ll just edit them into this post. In the HM Land Registry property sales data, the highest house number is 9156, which belongs to a house near Beccles in Suffolk. However there are no other houses on the same road, nor in fact anywhere nearby, which are numbered above 2000. I assume that, in the same way that you can give your house a name, you must also be able to give it a number as a name. There can’t be any other reason why a house on a street with fewer than 10 other houses would be number 9156. Or why a house in Owls Green, a village of about 20 houses near Ipswich, would be numbered 2820 (cute).<\/p>\n If we only include streets where the house numbers increment more or less continuously upwards, according to the HM Land Registry there are five streets in England and Wales with legitimate house numbers above 2000 (with the number of the highest house in brackets):<\/p>\n Four of these streets have Birmingham postcodes.<\/p>\n Anyway, it means that the highest numbered house<\/strong> is: 2679 Stratford Road, B94 5NH<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Yes, you heard me.<\/p>\n You might assume that the lowest house number would be 1, but there are quite a few houses numbered zero. Here are some (but probably not all) of them:<\/p>\n There are even some houses which go into negative numbers:<\/p>\n Minus Two:<\/p>\n Michael<\/em><\/a> commented to point out that there’s even a Minus Three! Do you know any lower?<\/p>\n The usual thing to do if you’re putting a new house in between two existing houses with consecutive numbers, is to add a letter: 10a, 17b, etc. But there are a surprising number of houses with fractions in their house numbers.<\/p>\n Here are some of the “halfway” houses:<\/p>\n The two buildings<\/a> marked with red arrows are shops, and according to their websites (here<\/a> and here<\/a>), they are both 3 Windsor Street<\/em>, but it seems that officially one is 3\u00bd and the other is 3\u00bc.<\/p>\n Likewise, the house marked with the purple arrow has the name Windsor Cottage<\/em> on its name plate, but again it seems that officially it is 1\u00bc.<\/p>\n There’s also 1\u00bc Woodchurch Road, Camden, London<\/a>.<\/p>\n And on the High Street, Earl Shilton, Leicestershire<\/em>, there are five consecutive houses which are numbered: 75, 75a, 75b, 75\u00bd, 75\u00be<\/a><\/p>\n The most nerdy address, found by Michael<\/em><\/a> has got to be a house numbered (or named) Pi<\/a>!<\/p>\n Tony<\/em><\/a> pointed out that Nesta have a map on their contact page<\/a> showing that they’re number 58 in a run of numbers, on London’s Victoria Embankment<\/em>, which goes: 40, 58, 50, 56, 60.<\/p>\n Bryn<\/em><\/a> notes that the High Street<\/em> in Kingswinford is numbered by the distance from one end of the road<\/a> in metres. They have still kept odd and even numbers on opposite sides of the road.<\/p>\n The widely stated ‘fact’ that all you need to provide is a house number and postcode for your post to reach the right address is not always true. There are many instances of different buildings having the same number and postcode. For example…<\/p>\n They all appear in the Royal Mail’s address finder<\/a>.<\/p>\n The postcode HD7 5UZ<\/strong> in Huddersfield also covers about seven different roads.<\/p>\n David<\/em><\/a> pointed out that in Edinburgh there are streets such as Haddington Place\/Elm Row<\/a>, which have different names in opposite directions.<\/p>\n Those streets have a tiny barrier down the middle, making them dual carriageways, but Shay<\/em><\/a> went one better with two streets in Gateshead where each side of a single-carriageway road has a different name. Cambridge Terrace \/ Oxford Terrace<\/a> and Ashgrove Terrace \/ Richmond Terrace<\/a>. The second of these has separate sets of numbers on each side of the street, so 1 Richmond Terrace<\/em> faces 1 Ashgrove Terrace<\/em>, on the same road. Some of the mapping sites struggle with this, just showing one of the names.<\/p>\n Scotty<\/em><\/a> points out a similar thing with Queen Street \/ Grosvenor Terrace<\/a> in Carlin How, North Yorkshire – except in this case both sides of the street have matching sets of only even numbers. Google Maps has transferred the name Grosvenor Terrace<\/em> to the back-alley running behind the houses.<\/p>\n A similar thing also exists with St Marks Road \/ Vine Place<\/a> in Ealing, West London. St Marks Road seems to have been given dominance on the road sign, but Google Maps calls them Vine Place. Again, each side of the road has its own set of numbers.<\/p>\n There’s also Croft Parade \/ Croft Avenue<\/a> in Cheltenham, each with its own set of numbers. About halfway down the street both sides become Croft Gardens.<\/p>\n Anthony<\/em><\/a> notes that the houses on the west side of Lainey\u2019s Close<\/em>, Marlborough SN8 1BS, actually have the address Chiminage Close<\/em>, which is a road running to the north. On one map I found, and in fact in real life as well<\/a>, it looks as if Chiminage Close<\/em> extends round and becomes the pavement of Lainey\u2019s Close<\/em>! Ralf<\/em><\/a> points out a strange phenomenon in Stevenage where entire estates, including the main road and all the spur roads, share the same name. So there’s Wisden Road<\/a>, Jessop Road<\/a>, Archer Road<\/a>, Ripon Road<\/a>, and others<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are over 600 streets called The Street<\/em>, and over 400 called New Street<\/em>. There are almost 1000 roads called New Road<\/em>, but oddly not a single road just called The Road<\/em>.<\/p>\n In Cumbria there is a road simply called Street<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n In Somerset there’s a road called Street Road<\/em><\/a>! It goes to a town called Street<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n There are almost 2500 streets called High Street<\/em>, and many more which are <name of town> High Street<\/em>, but there are only 59 streets named Low Street<\/em>!<\/p>\n Lots of industrial estates don’t bother naming streets at all and just give them numbers instead. Sometimes this happens with housing estates as well, like this one<\/a> in Grimsby, and this one<\/a> in Hull.<\/p>\n Apparently<\/a>, the shortest address in Royal Mail’s address database is:<\/p>\n Elba, Duns, TD11 3RY<\/strong><\/p>\n The longest address in their database is on the Isle Of Man, so not actually in the UK. It’s a government department where two thirds of the address is just the name of the department and the building it’s in.<\/p>\n There are at least three celebrities who have been named after UK streets:<\/p>\n And finally, inspired by Paul’s comment<\/em><\/a>, I took a list of single-word streetnames, and cross-referenced it with the SOWPODS<\/a> Scrabble dictionary to find a list of street names which are real words. Here are just a few of the most random ones…<\/p>\n Fairyland<\/a>, Chemistry<\/a>, Tweed<\/a>, Football<\/a>, Solid<\/a>, Dolphins<\/a>, Goldilocks<\/a>, Playground<\/a>, Hobgoblin<\/a>, Countryside<\/a>, Dart<\/a>, Badgers<\/a>, Panorama<\/a>, Antlers<\/a>, Chapter<\/a>, Dungeon<\/a>, Loan<\/a>, Bohemia<\/a>, Flush<\/a>, Groats<\/a>, Hide<\/a>, Jesters<\/a>, Valentines<\/a>, Drawback<\/a>, Sixpence<\/a>, Viking<\/a>, Side<\/a>, Paris<\/a>, Equilibrium<\/a>, Liberty<\/a>, Tranquility<\/a>, Butts<\/a>, Butts<\/a>, Butts<\/a>, Bottoms<\/a>, Bottoms<\/a>, Sprays<\/a>, Swallows<\/a>, Butts<\/a>.<\/p>\n A few of my previous blog posts have been about quirks in the UK postal address system. As a result of these posts being moderately popular, people have contacted me to tell me about other such quirks. This pleases me greatly – I like quirks. Mmmmm quirks. Also, since finding the HM Land Registry property Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-maps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1497,"href":"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions\/1497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nPS. If you’ve not read my previous posts, The HM Land Registry property sales data is a list of most residential property sales in England and Wales since 1995. It’s not a comprehensive list of every house in the UK, so the findings below are not comprehensive.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nHouse Numbers<\/h2>\n
Highest House Number<\/h3>\n
\n
\nLowest House Number<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\nNon-integer House Numbers<\/h3>\n
\n
Other Fractions<\/h3>\n
![\"Map](\"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/3.25.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nWeird Numbering Schemes<\/h3>\n
\n\n
![\"Royal](\"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/rmaddress.png\")
<\/a>The postcode CV12 8UE<\/strong> seems to cover Gatehouse Lane<\/strong>, Emes Walk<\/strong>, Bucklers Yard<\/strong>, Homers Yard<\/strong>, Lye Corner<\/strong>, Sleets Yard<\/strong>, and Old Penns Yard<\/strong> – which all share house numbers in various combinations. This must be super confusing – I can’t work out where most of these are on a map!<\/p>\n
\nStreet Names<\/h2>\n
Dual Named Streets<\/h3>\n
\n![\"Chiminage](\"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/chiminage.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n
\nUnimaginative Names<\/h3>\n
\n
\nCelebrity Names<\/h3>\n
\n
\nSingle Word Roadnames<\/h3>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"