How to correctly record addresses like 26 Lawrence Avenue, Manor Park

[familydar]

Probably a bit off-topic but I seem to recall from schooldays learning that many moons ago, possibly in Anglo Saxon times, "Ham" meant village (or it might have been hamlet).  "Ton" meant town.  So in West London (where I grew up) we had Teddington, Petersham, Ham, Kingston, Hampton (just to confuse things!).  There are loads of examples throughout the country, sometimes with "Ham" as a separate word, sometimes not.  Towns were bigger than villages and traditionally I believe they tended to have markets, whereas villages didn't.  "Bridge" and "Ford" spring to mind as other placenames that were descriptive.

Although London postcodes might have been introduced in the 1800s, I think this may just have been the general areas such as WC, EC, W, NW, N, NE, E, SE, SW - if you look at old postcards and printed material from the early 1900s they tend to say things like "London W" rather than "London W1".  I'm not sure when the London districts were given numbers but my Mum used to know them all - she was a London telephonist in the 1950s.  I used to know the W ones too and can remember being told they ran alphabetically once outside the very central part.  W3 Acton, W4 Chiswick, W5 Ealing, W6 Hammersmith, W7 Hanwell, W8 Kensington, W9 Maida Vale, W10 North Kensington, W11 Notting Hill, W12 Shepherds Bush, W13 West Ealing, W14 West Kensington.  There's probably something on Wikipedia.

Postcodes as we know them today (W1 1AA, SW1A 0AA, B5 4BU etc) were introduced roughly around the same time as decimalisation or our EEC entry I think - again, probably wikipedia will say.  I remember we had a sticker on the side of a kitchen cupboard and UB3 4QX is a postcode I've never forgotten (the area looks very different now!)

[Westy11]

Thank you as it is very useful to have an understanding of the derivations that combine to form the name of the town/village etc.

Westy

[familydar]

An afterthought - where we say we live depends a lot on who we're talking to/writing it down for.  Census forms - for years I put "London" as birthplace, it's only after I took up genealogy as a hobby that I started to give the actual district.  When speaking to other locals, people living in villages would probably say "West/East/North/South End" or similar, whereas in town on market day they probably gave their village name.  If talking to someone further afield who was unfamiliar with the area they would be more likely to give the name of the nearest big town.  And towns don't need to be all that big to have areas/districts so nowadays, in conversation, we can be quite specific about the part of town where we live (so as to distance ourselves from the less salubrious areas!).  But we wouldn't necessarily include that area as part of the address when writing it down.

Historically, census enumerators may not always have written down what people said, but their interpretation of it, which may not have been the same thing.  There's an Ireland in Bedfordshire and a Wales in Somerset and in Yorkshire, I'm sure they've caused no end of problems over the years.

[Westy11]

Thanks familydar

Westy