House numbers that jump

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Chris Bertram
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House numbers that jump

Post by Chris Bertram »

As in where the sequence skips a few numbers for no obvious reason such as a gap in the housing or there being a change of local authority. My own road does this, with No 43 being followed by No 59. The reason, i think, is that Nos 33-43 are later builds than the properties on either side of this group, and the plots are wider. Further down, there is no No 77, with No 75 having a double-width plot.

But for a really bizarre example, I give you the odd side of Umberslade Road, Selly Oak. At the top of the road there is a house with its door opening onto this road, but this is numbered 82 for the road round the corner. There is then a school, not numbered for the road, and a public park, so properties belonging to the road start some way down. The numbering sequence goes 1, 3, 5, 7 ... 79, with no gap in the houses. Now Nos 1-7 are clearly from a different period to the higher-numbered houses, but I would say are older. Why was the numbering not just continued from there? Or why were the very low numbers used at all? I have to say I have no idea. There is no rule that numbers on opposite sides of a road have to match, or be even roughly in step, but equally no obligation to start from 1 in all cases.

Any other instances of crazy numbering come to mind?
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by Steven »

Chris Bertram wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 22:08 There is no rule that numbers on opposite sides of a road have to match, or be even roughly in step, but equally no obligation to start from 1 in all cases.

Any other instances of crazy numbering come to mind?
In a street near to me, 1 is opposite 49. Whilst that seems odd, it's because the road is sort of D shaped with an open park area in the centre, and a single access route into the D, so all houses are numbered sequentially along the outside edge (with 13 missing). Although the two given houses are opposite each other, if you start outside number 1, then walk to number 2, and continue to walk along the same pavement without crossing any roads, you eventually get to the same point, just on the other side of the street.
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Re: House numbers that jump

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To my knowledge there is no 13 in my street, although it is listed wrongly on Google Maps. The last house in my street is numbered 21 but in reality there are only 20 homes. I don't really understand why it's harder for developers to sell homes numbered 13 when to me, it's just a number. In the case of my street the numbers jump from 12 to 14 but I believe a few streets have a home numbered 12A.
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Re: House numbers that jump

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Very occasionally it can be due to a house being destroyed in the WWII Blitz and not rebuilt.
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by doebag »

My neighbours are 82 and 88
Our house is on a double plot and therefore has a name on the Royal Mail database but no number.
Neighbour 88 then built a house next to his and it is 88A.

Opposite me is 19, due to a large Church taking up a large portion of the road.
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by Chris Bertram »

Actually, thinking back, when I was growing up, we lived in No 31, and while No 33 was where you'd expect, the next house in the other direction was No 21. This was the house of local brewery owner Teddy Holden, it was of course a sizeable affair behind a stone wall and took up five plots. Said pile has now been demolished, but the numbering gap remains, as it has been replaced by a small development of several houses on a separately-named close.
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by FosseWay »

My road forms more or less a crucifix shape, with the bottom being the vehicular access and the other arms being dead ends for anything larger than a bicycle. The numbering appears to start from the main road with odd numbers going up the left side and round the left horizontal arm to the top of the cross, and even numbers doing likewise on the right. The numbering goes 1, 9, 11, 13, 15, 19 and 2, 4, 10, 14, 16, 18, 20. Looked at on the map it appears fairly logical (though the missing numbers don't necessarily coincide with places on the ground where you could reasonably build a new house), but on the ground it has the effect that, if you follow the odd-numbered arm, you pass the properties in the order 1, 19, 15, 30*, 13, 11, 9. (* 30 applies to the numbering on the main road, not on my street, but is accessed from opposite my house. Go figure.)
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by PhilC »

Here's a couple of examples that I am aware of.

This is the first. The house on the right is 24, and for no obvious reason the house on the left is 30. They both appear to be of a similar age although the houses to the right are of a slightly larger design to those on the left.

https://goo.gl/maps/9Rq34kimorZUb98s7

This is the second. For many years the large detached house with the white van parked in front of it was the first house in the road. It is 142 and the numbering increases to the right to the end of the road. To the left is a golf course which used to come right up to the edge of the road. In the 1960s the golf course sold a strip of land adjoining the road for development and houses were built from 2 up as far as the house with white weatherboards on the left, which is 94, leaving a gap between it and 142. Many years later, probably in the early 2000s, the new brick-built house was erected on the vacant plot. This is 140, effectively leaving a large gap in the numbering.

https://goo.gl/maps/MfpwdNCYYHnmZPWM8

Here is a situation where the opposite has happened. The house on the far right with the white garage door is 20, the house with the white BMW is 20A, the house with the blue Mazda is 22, the house with the red Toyota is 22A and the house on the far left is 24. I seem to remember there being a small bungalow where 22 and 22A now stand, although 20A has been there for as long as I can remember.

https://goo.gl/maps/zwMAwHVQygcMP62f9
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by KeithW »

IAN wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 22:32 Very occasionally it can be due to a house being destroyed in the WWII Blitz and not rebuilt.
There was a variation on that theme when I was a kid with a paper round. One of the streets I delivered to had an 11, 11A and 15. I asked the owner about it one day and the story was that 11A had been 13 but was hit by a bomb. It didn't explode but the man who lived there decided not to push his luck and renumbered it :) It didnt work that well as in the 1980's the whole street was demolished to make way for the A66.
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by c2R »

I've been adding lots of house numbers to openstreetmap when I'm walking around.

Not having number 13s is fairly common on new build estates and streets.

This sort of thing seemed quite common in this part of Birmingham, at least, where the semis that were diagonal on to the corner of another street were numbered with one half of the semi belonging to one road and the other half belonging to the other, but then skipping out the two numbers from the main road that the other parts of the semi might have used: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/52.48392/-1.78393

As mentioned in another thread, Apton Road in Stortford changes location at a seemingly random point, resulting in these houses being numbered in the high 150s, while Scott Road then starts from 10
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by trickstat »

RJDG14 wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 22:19 To my knowledge there is no 13 in my street, although it is listed wrongly on Google Maps. The last house in my street is numbered 21 but in reality there are only 20 homes. I don't really understand why it's harder for developers to sell homes numbered 13 when to me, it's just a number. In the case of my street the numbers jump from 12 to 14 but I believe a few streets have a home numbered 12A.
The estate where I live jumps from 12 to 14 also. I think most people aren't that bothered by a house being numbered 13 either, but they may worry that others might be, which is a concern if you later want to sell it. They don't want the situation in which a potential buyer really likes the house but is superstitious enough to rule it out just because of the number. For example, a developer might build an estate with 30 identical 'starter' homes that are largely aimed at young couples. A couple have a choice of all these to make a reservation against. They are very unlikely to choose the one numbered 13 as they foresee that, in a few years' time, when they may be looking towards buying a larger home, perhaps to start a family, it may be more difficult to sell or at least attain its true market value.
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by RJDG14 »

trickstat wrote: Tue Dec 21, 2021 15:32
RJDG14 wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 22:19 To my knowledge there is no 13 in my street, although it is listed wrongly on Google Maps. The last house in my street is numbered 21 but in reality there are only 20 homes. I don't really understand why it's harder for developers to sell homes numbered 13 when to me, it's just a number. In the case of my street the numbers jump from 12 to 14 but I believe a few streets have a home numbered 12A.
The estate where I live jumps from 12 to 14 also. I think most people aren't that bothered by a house being numbered 13 either, but they may worry that others might be, which is a concern if you later want to sell it. They don't want the situation in which a potential buyer really likes the house but is superstitious enough to rule it out just because of the number. For example, a developer might build an estate with 30 identical 'starter' homes that are largely aimed at young couples. A couple have a choice of all these to make a reservation against. They are very unlikely to choose the one numbered 13 as they foresee that, in a few years' time, when they may be looking towards buying a larger home, perhaps to start a family, it may be more difficult to sell or at least attain its true market value.
I've noticed in the close next to mine (or technically the one that runs onto mine, which was built about 10 years later; you have to go through it to get to my close) that number 15 jumps to 16 but with a house in between. While this never occured to me before, the house in between has a slightly different (yet still typically 80s) style of architecture which makes me suspect that it was built slightly later and is probably called 15A. Google suggests that there is a 15A on the street while there isn't a 14A or any other home ending in A.
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by RichardA626 »

Often hotels don't have a room 13, & often large buildings don't have a 13th floor.
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by yen_powell »

I used to work in a team that amongst other things carried out the naming and numbering function. At the time docklands was being redeveloped at an incredible pace and I was having to carry out searches on addresses that weren't even on the OS maps. Not fun when someone is standing there waiting for me to fill out the paperwork and return it at speed.

I noticed that a few blocks on one long road had some very odd spacings and when I asked why I was told that no one had any idea how it would all be divided up when the road was first redeveloped so a best guess was made for the earliest developments (which were in the middle) as to their street number. Some adjustment was required a few years later.
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by swissferry »

RJDG14 wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 22:19 To my knowledge there is no 13 in my street, although it is listed wrongly on Google Maps. The last house in my street is numbered 21 but in reality there are only 20 homes. I don't really understand why it's harder for developers to sell homes numbered 13 when to me, it's just a number. In the case of my street the numbers jump from 12 to 14 but I believe a few streets have a home numbered 12A.
What I've read on the topic mostly suggests houses numbered 13 sell for around 10% less. There was a tabloid article which suggests they may sell for more. It also notes that lower numbers sell for more than higher numbers which makes me think survey was simply looking at cost vs house number without taking into account size, location, etc.
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by RJDG14 »

swissferry wrote: Tue Dec 21, 2021 19:18
RJDG14 wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 22:19 To my knowledge there is no 13 in my street, although it is listed wrongly on Google Maps. The last house in my street is numbered 21 but in reality there are only 20 homes. I don't really understand why it's harder for developers to sell homes numbered 13 when to me, it's just a number. In the case of my street the numbers jump from 12 to 14 but I believe a few streets have a home numbered 12A.
What I've read on the topic mostly suggests houses numbered 13 sell for around 10% less. There was a tabloid article which suggests they may sell for more. It also notes that lower numbers sell for more than higher numbers which makes me think survey was simply looking at cost vs house number without taking into account size, location, etc.
I would base house size (when it comes to pricing) around the total number of square feet/metres, which seems commonplace in most countries other than the UK, where the number of rooms still seems to dominate.
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Re: House numbers that jump

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RJDG14 wrote: Tue Dec 21, 2021 19:37 I would base house size (when it comes to pricing) around the total number of square feet/metres, which seems commonplace in most countries other than the UK, where the number of rooms still seems to dominate.
Number of (bed)rooms is much more important when you've got to think about children and also potentially home working...
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Re: House numbers that jump

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yen_powell wrote: Tue Dec 21, 2021 17:20I noticed that a few blocks on one long road had some very odd spacings and when I asked why I was told that no one had any idea how it would all be divided up when the road was first redeveloped so a best guess was made for the earliest developments (which were in the middle) as to their street number. Some adjustment was required a few years later.
Probably more of an issue in the Docklands in that era than it would usually be in any other situation - most planning controls were lifted, so developers were free to erect buildings of whatever type and form they thought best. Hence, if you built the first building in a new street, nobody could say how many there might be to either side because there was no authority to plan such things!
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by Chris Bertram »

I guess speculative numbering can apply elsewhere, c.f. A1(M) junction numbering between Dishforth and Barton, where fewer junctions were deemed necessary than originally planned so we jump from 53 at Scotch Corner to 56 at Barton.
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Re: House numbers that jump

Post by RichardA626 »

London has had some renumberings of streets due to redevelopment, especially when some older buildings have been replaced by newer ones. Sometimes some roads were merged, with the numbering from one street being extended onto the other one.

Originally Baker Street only ran into the 70s, but later extended into the 200s. Sherlock Holmes fan mail was for many years delivered to Abbey House which occupies the plot including 221B. For many years Abbey National used to employ a secretary to handle it.
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