UK Street Numbering

[carol8353]

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 

Carol

[JenB]

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.

[newburychap]

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.

[mshrmh]

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!

[JenB]

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.

[panda40]

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

[GrahamSimons]

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."

[rancegal]

  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!

[smudwhisk]

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.