RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: a chesters on Saturday 05 January 13 05:32 GMT (UK)
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Looking at Google Maps, to try to locate some of my ancestors houses, Mr Google has the street numbers consecutive, odds and evens on the same side of the street. Here in Sydney, the odds are on one side, and the evens on the other. (I am on the odd side ;D ;D)
In the UK, are the numbers consecutive, as per Google, or is Mr Google wrong?
Whichever, it would make it easier to locate the houses I am interesed in looking at.
A Chesters
in rather warm Sydney
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we all a bit odd in this family history caper :)
however if you see a street with numbers 1,2,3 on the same side sometimes it is tenement housing much as you would have a block of flats....... but normally it is exactly the way you would see it in Australia inless u lived of a boat where the pier numbers follow the outer extremtity of the line leaving from the boathouse to come back to the boathouse. :)
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furthering that I forgot to mention if there are houses facing a waterway or beach and there are no houses on tother side then the estate numbers will be 1234 etcetc :)
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Thank you for your prompt reply.
That means that i will have to try to read the numbers on the houses, as Mr Google simply goes one after the other with "approximate"
Just went to the other side of the street, and it still gives even numbers, just as it did before I changed sides. Bother etc
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Yes, generally you'll have odd numbers on one side and even numbers on the other.
There are a few exceptions (as Fastfusion says).
On housing estates the numbers can go a bit funny too, especially if the builders decide to squeeze in extra plots. Also, due to demolition and reconstruction the numbers can go out of synch.
I used to have a paper round - so I know the frustration of the door numbers (not to mention some letter boxes, and the growling dogs behind them).
Sometimes you can see the door numbers themselves in Google Streetview (but they may be blurred out).
Trystan
(In a cold and wet and dark Bury, Lancashire)
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The trouble is, different areas and times had different ideas. A lot of the Victorian and early 1900's streets in my home town are numbered consecutively along one side and then back along the other. Some streets have houses built at various times and the numbering system can be a little odd, some are not numbered,only having names.
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Hi,
RC members living outside the UK should remember that the buildings/plots in some of our older towns date from before 1500 (AD that is!). The numbering in the main street of my own home town runs up the south side for half a mile or more, then back down the northern side to about number 150 or so. This is not uncommon all over the UK.
Alan
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And don't forget that, in many towns, streets have been re-numbered over the years! ::)
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I don't think anybody has mentioned that numbering usually starts from the end of the street nearest the town centre, with odd numbers on the left and evens on the right, looking out from the centre, and side streets are similarly numbered starting from the main street. I would have assumed everyone knows this, but the education system seems to have left recent generations surprisingly ignorant of basic general knowledge >:(
However, as pointed out previously, there are many exceptions to the rules . . . ;)
Mike.
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Sometimes you can see the door numbers themselves in Google Streetview (but they may be blurred out).
Trystan
(In a cold and wet and dark Bury, Lancashire)
They often blur out the door number,but leave the wheelie bin with it's number in full view ;D
Carol
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Looking at Google Maps, to try to locate some of my ancestors houses,
Can I agree with what kgarrad has said - some streets have been re-numbered. It's quite possible that the house number shown, for instance, in a census, is not the same number as that same house has today.
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The English Heritage site http://list.english-heritage.org.uk/ is designed to allow you to find listed buildings - but the maps they provide have the best street level mapping I have found online.
Search for the place of interest and choose to 'Show results on Map'. Then zoom in and eventually you will get to a map that shows the current house numbers.
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As mike 175 posts that is the "default" numbering system and applies to my own address - however Google's StreetView has this house as a number that is actually on the opposite side of the road, several houses away - I think they must use an "average" street-frontage to calculate their numbers - so their numbers need a very large pinch of salt!
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As mike 175 posts that is the "default" numbering system and applies to my own address - however Google's StreetView has this house as a number that is actually on the opposite side of the road, several houses away - I think they must use an "average" street-frontage to calculate their numbers - so their numbers need a very large pinch of salt!
I've just searched my own house number on Google maps. The result gives a house in the right road, but some distance away from the correct one.
You would do far better to look at Ordnance Survey maps which show the correct numbering. The English Heritage link given by newburychap is excellent.
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Where I was born on the original house deeds the house was 6 Alexander cottages and was built as a costguard cottage. Our house and the one next to it were larger than the others in the street. When we lived in it 100 years after it was built it was 26 Tower street. I would advise doing some research using old maps to see if the area has changed. Also remember the damage done during the Second World War where houses were destroyed and rebuilt years later.
Regards panda
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The "down one side and up the other" system has one of my favourite words: boustrophedon: "like the course of the plough in successive furrows."
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What a lovely word! I must try to remember it.
I don't think Google intend 'Street View' to show the correct numbers.
They took a series of photos every few yards, so the number it displays is where that photo was taken.
I live in a cul-de-sac. The 3 bungalows where I live are up a private drive behind a brick wall. Only our garage door is visible on Google. In the other part, one house has no number at all, one is no.7, next door is no.10, then 12 and the two other houses are 40a and 42a relating to numbers in the street at the bottom of our drive! It drives canvassers mad!
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I don't think anybody has mentioned that numbering usually starts from the end of the street nearest the town centre, with odd numbers on the left and evens on the right, looking out from the centre, and side streets are similarly numbered starting from the main street. I would have assumed everyone knows this, but the education system seems to have left recent generations surprisingly ignorant of basic general knowledge >:(
However, as pointed out previously, there are many exceptions to the rules . . . ;)
Mike.
They forgot that in the 1950s when my parents house was built, the low end numbers are the opposite end furthest from town. I've not heard of that one before, and round by me where a lot of the roads run effectively parallel to the centre of the city, the theory falls a little flat. ;D
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See also this previous thread on much the same topic: http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,614809.0.html
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Thanks to all of you for that information. That just makes it all the more difficult to find the house one is looking for.
At least, in these cases, the streets have not been renamed, as quite a few have been in Sydney City. There is an Excel worksheet which gives the old and the corresponding names :P
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Egham High St where a number of ancestors where starts and one end 1, 2, 3, ... wraps around at the end and ends up I guess at about 160's opposite 1
Also I live in riverside house and they are also sequential
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Other moans about street numbering: Shops don't usually display their street number- I n our local High St. try finding the flat above no. 32b! House numbers are generally too far back to view from the road, particularly on a dark night . Many is the time that, as a taxi driver, I drove slowly down a strange street, turned at the end, and drove back again, vainly searching for number 24 or, worse still, Mon Repose or The Laurels( which had been cut down by a previous owner!) Why not insist on numbers and names being displayed clearly on the front gate? ( or numbered wheelie bins being left out! :) :)
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Other moans about street numbering: Shops don't usually display their street number- I n our local High St. try finding the flat above no. 32b! House numbers are generally too far back to view from the road, particularly on a dark night . Many is the time that, as a taxi driver, I drove slowly down a strange street, turned at the end, and drove back again, vainly searching for number 24 or, worse still, Mon Repose or The Laurels( which had been cut down by a previous owner!) Why not insist on numbers and names being displayed clearly on the front gate? ( or numbered wheelie bins being left out! :) :)
How true
Amd when they are numbered it is not always helpful
I had a letter from somone working on the location of my ancestor James Douglass's premises in Guildford St Chertsey
This number does not currently exist
The numbers higher exist IIRC there were three no 114's in the Street, and a 110
HOwever I did crack it.
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I suspect the recent expansion of online shopping may prompt many more people to make sure their house numbers/names are more visible, to ensure they get their deliveries . . . ;)
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Makes no difference!
My house is plainly numbered; but most online address forms don't allow enough space for a complete address (I live in Esplanade Mews, Esplanade Lane!).
Consequently we get phone calls from lost delivery drivers!
Usually lost on The Esplanade?! ;D
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and .... many developers leave out No. 13, so you will find 11 and then next door No. 15.
We moved late 2011, the small development built approx 12 years ago has the most bizarre numbering system. All delivery drivers take pot luck and if no signature is required they drop and run. I receive parcels for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 ! I live at one of the above. I have yet to find No 6 ;D
Pat ...
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Thanks for all the information and insights.
I live in northern Sydney, and the council does not have a No 13 anywhere in its area :o :o
As for some deliver drivers, we had a delivery once, where the driver was completely lost. He thought that as our suburb started with Mount, we were up the Blue Mountains :-X :-X
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My house was built in 1933 as part of a small private delevopment with a number of small crescents. The numbering was continuous around the estate and our house was on the spur from the main road. After 1945 (and a little rearrangement by the Luftwaffe) my road became prt on a new ring-road. The crescents were given individual names but the numbering stayed unchanged.
The result is that the numbers on "my" road now jump 76 places from the house next to mine, across the entrance to the crescents. Before the satnav era I got used to running out to flag down delivery vans and on one memorable occasion an ambulance (kidney stone, mine, 2am)
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Do your dustmen leave the bin in front of the right house?
No so often here