Did 1960s rural addresses not have house numbers? Where in Burstow did my Nana live??
Posted by starbellybear@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 285 comments
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RattyHandwriting@reddit
I live in a hamlet with about 25 houses and none of us have house numbers…
It’s pretty common, especially in rural areas and small villages.
BillWilberforce@reddit
I always eel sorry for guests and delivery drivers trying to find a house name instead of a number. Especially pre-GPS maps.
publiusnaso@reddit
I have a Hue colour changing bulb in our porch light. If I’m expecting a delivery I set it to green. Delivery drivers are very grateful!
YourLittleRuth@reddit
That... is brilliant.
Belle_TainSummer@reddit
So... red/green colourblind drivers (about 20% of the male population, and 2% of the female population) still can't find your place.
publiusnaso@reddit
I’d like to think they can see the disproportionately large signs with our house name on them both on the front door and by the front gate.
Belle_TainSummer@reddit
Which wasn't mentioned previously, and only brought up because your previous comment got called as being potentially problematic.
publiusnaso@reddit
I’m sorry. I’ll go back to inconveniencing 100% of delivery drivers so I’m not discriminating against 4% of delivery drivers by making life easier for the other 96%.
BillWilberforce@reddit
How can I hack it and change it to red?
quilatoo@reddit
Your parcel will be delivered by ROXANNE tomorrow between 21:04 and 01:04
philipwhiuk@reddit
That’s just the standard Evri parcel service
Jacktheforkie@reddit
I’ve got to run it over first using a 32 ton HGV
Individual_Rule8771@reddit
You don't have to put on a red light ...
publiusnaso@reddit
I’m sure my wife would love to generate a bit of extra income, and I’ve always fancied a fur coat and a 1972 Lincoln Continental.
FOARP@reddit
“I said DON’T BUY ANYTHING!”
ScreamingDizzBuster@reddit
Careful you don't attract Jay Gatsby too.
Willeth@reddit
This is a great idea!
Veefy@reddit
Step up to Red alert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvOxVsClUCU
lottierosecreations@reddit
Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb.
ElegantOliver@reddit
Best. Line. Ever.
Fearless-Dust-2073@reddit
That's a great idea for very rural spots!
malcolite@reddit
Genius. I’m going to do that.
vectorology@reddit
Genius!
Useful-Risk-4340@reddit
It's not a big deal. They never struggle to find the road or lane and if they can't read the house name (either mounted on the house, a wall or garden gate) then they ring up and check. Takes no time at all. If I'm home, I just open the door as soon as I see them.
BillWilberforce@reddit
Delivery drivers hate having to ring up. Most of them are supposed to do something insane like 20-30 drops per hour. Which is why they piss in bottles because they don't have the time to go to the toilet.
Useful-Risk-4340@reddit
?? This is my experience. They never rush parking, the signing or carrying of packages and always laugh and chat. They rarely ring up anyway because they know how to find us. Example, there's two houses down a lane here and the opposite road has six houses, further roads have eight or so houses. There aren't long roads with rows of hundred identical looking houses each with individual names. It's a village with a few dwellings. More often than not a house name refers to something about the house or the immediate area like, 'green gates barn', 'grey stones cottage', 'orchard view'.
supernakamoto@reddit
I used to do supermarket deliveries and it really was a pain in the backside. Because numbered houses are sequential, when you’re driving down a road you only need to catch one or two house numbers to figure out which the one is that you’re after. When the houses just have names though you have to clock every sign. Some of them are nigh on impossible to read while you’re driving past as well.
BillWilberforce@reddit
I've got a number that's clearly visible from the street but my preferred supermarket delivery chain uses a mapping system that isn't Google. Which puts my house about 13 houses down. So I often have to start waving at the driver and tell him to come down.
Low_Border_2231@reddit
Thing is the roads often don't have names, signs or are so spaced out that numbering becomes a bit useless.
RattyHandwriting@reddit
We’ve had the same postman for twenty years, that helps. 🤣
BillWilberforce@reddit
What about the pizza delivery guy?
Icy_Consideration409@reddit
In the 21st century, What.three.words makes it easy.
BillWilberforce@reddit
Problem with What3 is that the information is proprietary, with the company behind it charging for access if you over 1,000 requests per month. It uses a library of 40,000 words some of which haves silent plurals and is heavily inflienced by the local linguistics. So dictating the words over a phone or radio frequently causes issues, especially for drivers with poor education or English as a Second Language. With a "near miss" for the words, leading to substantial differences. The company behind it has always been loss making and could go bust at any time.
Icy_Consideration409@reddit
Fair enough.
But no pizza delivery driver is making 1000 requests a month.
And most deliveries are ordered on line. Allowing you to type in the three words with no risk of confusion.
collinsl02@reddit
But a company like Domino's would be making that number globally, and it would be a breach of the what3words contract for drivers to do it on their own phones for commercial purposes, for which domino's would be sued and would lose, probably in multiple jurisdictions.
Icy_Consideration409@reddit
Ignoring the fact that what.three.words wouldn’t know that the driver was working as a dominos driver if he used his own phone…
Dominos in the UK and Ireland is its own legal entity (Dominos Pizza Group PLC), which is a separate company to Dominos entities in the U.S., Brazil, or anywhere else it operates.
The vast majority of stores are not owned by Dominos Pizza Group PLC, but the owners of the franchise. So again, different legal entities. And with most locations in urban rather than rural locations, making deliveries to homes without numbers is relatively rare. So very, very few franchisees would come anywhere near to hitting 1000 searches a month.
BlackJackKetchum@reddit
I always offer my W3W to minicab offices when booking, and sometimes they actually use it rather than driving to the centre of the post code two miles away….
Whollie@reddit
When you live rural enough, no-one delivers.
Daveddozey@reddit
I get Indian, Chinese and Pizza delivered - only about 10 minute drive from the towns.
malcolite@reddit
Too true. I’d never used an Uber until recently and have never been able to employ Deliveroo or JustEat’s services either.
MegaMolehill@reddit
The village in Cornwall i grew up in had one takeaway - a fish and chip shop and they didn’t deliver. I was in my twenties before I first had a takeaway delivered.
BillWilberforce@reddit
I grieve for you.
blubbery-blumpkin@reddit
As someone who works in an ambulance, it can be quite annoying if everyone has similar names. You often find that someone has a big house named after a place and it’s called x manor, then someone will have just x, and there’ll be a farm a few hundred metres down the way called x farm, and that’ll have a small Croft on it called x Croft. And you’re there trying to find the right one before someone dies.
jiiiii70@reddit
Even numbers don't always help. My parents live on a street with at least five number 4s (an actual no 4, plus four others that are number 4 xxxx court, number 4 xxxx apartments etc), and the numbers do not go up logically due to demolitions and new builds over the years. Number 4 is half way up the street, but numbers 1, 1A and 8 are opposite, and number 20 is at the start, whilst number 18 is at the end. And then there is all the number xxxA, xxxB, where even more houses have been shoehorned in.
chaves4life@reddit
Not really, each house name secretly has a number behind it.
silverfish477@reddit
Just fix the spelling, don’t use weird brackets
Daveddozey@reddit
Oh the old “please deliver to “The Cottage, Long Lane”
When long lane is 5 miles long, has 40 houses, none of which have easily visible signs - especially at night from the road.
No-Introduction3808@reddit
I used to have a satnav that needed a door number to process a journey, I was due to drive to a friends family members house. They gave me the postcode and I said what’s the door number, they said oh it’s a name it doesn’t have a number. I asked them to give me an estimated door number as otherwise I don’t know where along the road I’m going, if I select 1 and it’s the other end how will I know. They were very reluctant to even do that, some people are so proud not to have a number, it defies logic to me.
cosmicspaceowl@reddit
I occasionally spend a bit of my free time knocking on people's doors to give them the opportunity to shout at me about politics (democratic process innit) and I genuinely do not know how some of these houses ever get non-postie deliveries, or even normal post when their usual postie is off work. I have to assume they either make extensive use of Amazon lockers in the nearest town or somehow enjoy having to get refunds on half their online shopping.
Project_Rees@reddit
One of my friends relatives lives in a named house out in the countryside. They often have new delivery drivers unable to find it.
They now use what.3.words on one of their address lines to make it easier
Beautiful_Account499@reddit
Let’s just hope someone doesn’t accidentally add an S to any of those words….what3words is nonsense
Rootes_Radical@reddit
The best ones are when you have an NSL stretch of B-road that everyone bombs it down and you’ve got to work out which one of the twenty houses in the middle of it’s in is Green Gables or whatever while all the people behind you bear down on you. You don’t even know what side it’s on.
The gables will never be green either.
Another point of frustration is they’re never consistent as to where they have the signs either, it wouldn’t be so bad if they all had a sign at the end of the drive that you could see from both directions but they’re always all over the place. I think it’s a game the rich play to mess with delivery plebs.
It’s fine on side roads but on main roads it’s an absolute nightmare sometimes.
At least delivery drivers have a set route they can learn to an extent but when I was doing white goods repair my area was Essex, Suffolk and bits of Norfolk so I had no hope!
Sufficient_Cat9205@reddit
Definately a posh area if you all have house names!
Ok-Airline-8420@reddit
My sister lives in a tiny hamlet with no street names, just house numbers.
Her address is "24" and that's it.
RattyHandwriting@reddit
That’s quite cool! A couple of the houses here do have numbers, I’ve been reminded, but they are the cottage numbers that were given by the estate they used to belong to. So they’re 101 and 102 (Hamlet). There are not 102 houses in a 5 mile radius so it confuses the ever loving f*** out of the Evri guy…
nemmalur@reddit
It was probably a house name. Houses in the UK can have just names, or a name in addition to a number.
EarnestHolly@reddit
Many houses even today don’t have numbers but just names instead. The Royal Mail maintains their own database of them.
ayeayefitlike@reddit
My house has only a name, and not even a road name. Our postal address is just ‘House Name, Village Name, Town Name, County, Post Code’.
We use what3words for delivery companies.
BlueGatherer@reddit
My last address in the UK was on an island in Orkney, and its postal address didn't even have a village or town. It was, , Orkney, .
bluesam3@reddit
I used to live in a house where the post box (and hence post code) was on an entirely separate road to the actual entrance (flat above a shop on a main road, car access around the back). Explaining that to my parents was... painful.
Arsewhistle@reddit
I really wish what3words was a thing back when I delivered pizzas as a student.
There was one village where almost every house didn't have a number, it was a nightmare
Verdigri5@reddit
Same, and the village is pretty much a single road 4 miles long, thankfully the postcode narrows it down a bit now for sat nav users. Before sat nav, it was 3rd house on the right after the phone box.
RadVarken@reddit
Rural addresses in the US used to be that way. They gave you two lines two basically write directions to get to the place.
ayeayefitlike@reddit
Ours is on a dead end single track road about a mile out of the village on the side of a hill, but there’s a dozen or so houses out that way that share the large postcode. It’s a nightmare for delivery drivers!
SpikesNLead@reddit
I've across plenty of Irish addresses which are even worse - stuff like Mr McSomebody, Tiny Village, County Donegal. I think Ireland introduced a proper postcode system about 10 years ago but prior to that, you presumably relied upon the postman knowing you if you want to get your mail.
AlternativeGreedy787@reddit
Yes I have had customers put W3W in delivery instructions when working, but I use the PostTag app for precise location of properties with house names.
ScreenNameToFollow@reddit
A friend of mine lived in a village like that. It only had about 4 streets but that postie must have had an impressive memory.
GastricallyStretched@reddit
Counties are not technically part of the address. Royal Mail doesn't require counties, so the last line before the postcode is the post town.
freexe@reddit
Your house basically only officially exists if a postman knows where it is.
So if you build a house in the woods you basically need to bribe a postman to deliver to your location to have it officially added to the system
wearezombie@reddit
We bought a new build and the same also applied tbh. We registered our address on the RM website two weeks prior like we were told to but didn’t get any of the parcels or letters we were expecting. Went to the depot and they were like ah, we kept getting letters and parcels for that address but we had no idea where it was. There’s a different system to the one you registered on that your developer should use to tell us where you physically are.
Weeks and months later, still no post, still going to the depot to pick things up… Eventually we formed a bond with the lads that worked there and they went ffs just draw us a map and we’ll add it to our round ourselves.
Daveddozey@reddit
Generally the address will be registered with council, fire, Royal Mail etc before you move in. Many companies don’t bother/pay to keep their databases up to date though and you can struggle for a couple of years - especially when it’s a new postcode.
januarynights@reddit
Yup, I've got a postcode that's existed for about 4 years and there's still websites that don't recognise the postcode because they're using old databases.
dreamsonashelf@reddit
I lived in a place where I'd moved to about 3 years after it was built. I naively thought it wouldn't be considered a "new" postcode by then, but most companies were using old databases, and I had all sorts of problems ranging from deliveries not reaching me to payment being declined because addresses wouldn't match (which also had to do with the way the full address format was officially registered).
It took years from the point I moved in to have it sort of fixed, and even after a decade, we'd still have the occasional issue.
bethelns@reddit
My house was built in 1995 and some of the utilities still had it as the pre developer build name for the area.
HugoNebula2024@reddit
There is a specific section within councils responsible for street naming & numbering. They maintain the database of all addresses known as UPRNs (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/identifying-property-and-street-information).
Belle_TainSummer@reddit
These days it is when posttag, delemate, and googlemaps add it to their database that it goes live for deliveries.
theevildjinn@reddit
We used to live in a new build cottage that was basically a shoddy barn conversion that they'd thrown up using the leftover bricks from a set of much nicer new cottages. The landlady had got it for cheap and she'd decided to call it Willow Cottage, but the only house sign she'd had made was a sheet of laminated A4 that kept blowing away. She hadn't registered it with the Royal Mail, and she didn't seem to understand why I kept asking her to do it.
The official long-form address format of the surrounding cottages was really long:
So over the course of me living there, I'd use some variant of that but with "Willow Cottage" as the cottage name when giving my address for something. Sometimes I'd use the property developer's home or office address instead (both were on the same development site), or a farm building round the corner. Had to type it in manually in full every time.
Then we decided to buy our first home, and I went to get a mortgage. They said there were problems with my credit file, and I had to get in touch with Experian to sort it out. Turned out they had me living at 25 slightly different addresses over the course of a year, which was having a huge effect on my credit score.
I checked a few years later if the landlady ever registered it, and it was now in the Royal Mail postcode database - as "Willow Cottag" (sic).
Academic-Gate-5535@reddit
Can be a PITA for when changes are made, and RM haven't updated the database yet. Never mind it to filter down to websites.
My old work was in a new office building, RM didn't update for like a year!
freexe@reddit
If you've ever worked on the PAF database you'd understand it's a total mess. The idea of a primary key does not exist.
Whoooshingsound@reddit
My post goes to my landlords house because of this. Royal Mail say “there’s no access”. Meanwhile we’re all happy teleporting in and out. Stingy bastards.
BouncyCatMama@reddit
Yep. When new buildings go up or flats made from a formerly single dwelling, Royal Mail will tell you what the new addresses are. Most have numbers, some have letters and some have names, but as long as it matches RM's list, it's an official address.
Exact-Put-6961@reddit
No you dont. You can apply for a single post code.
Exact-Put-6961@reddit
You can also apply to your local authority for a road name.
In practice you are better applying to Google maps first
HungryFinding7089@reddit
Greenwoid, Church Road, OP
ReputationApart5983@reddit
I used to deliver packages to random addresses. Some bastards didnt have the audacity to put up a door number. Id be on streets where the houses are number 1,2,3,4,5,etc then there will be one with a name like the green or something and the next house would have numbers. Or some will be named 1 and the next one 1A. Some houses didnt even have numbers or names at all, always in the rural areas too.
SpeedingViper@reddit
I love ordering takeaway from a new place and the confused delivery driver calls
Driver: what number are you?
Me: as I put in the delivery address it's -House name-, there is no number.
Driver: ok but what number are you?
doc1442@reddit
To be fair this is because we’ve hit on a weird trend of using postcodes and house numbers as geo-location data, which they are not. W3W (or preferably some none arbitrary, open coordinate system) is actually much better.
Scarred_fish@reddit
W3W is absolutely awful, indeed dangerous.
Emergency services responded to an accident at likely.stage.sock, but found nothing. It was actually at likely.stages.sock. Only 1.5km away - but on opposite side of the river Clyde!
There are other real life stories too, reworked.sheet.lions are 1.8km apart - but on the other side of a mountain valley, this led to extensive mountain rescue delays.
The claims made by W3W have been proven to be nonsense. It is a fun novelty, but not to be used seriously. deep.pink.start is only 1km away from deep.pinks.start for example.
There is a more accurate UK system but wasning, its NSFW - Four King Maps
CriticalMine7886@reddit
Blimey my 2 bedrooms have very different characters based on that map :-)
doc1442@reddit
Or an even better one called OS Grid references ;)
scarletcampion@reddit
W3W is probably even worse than usual here, because any verbal delivery depends on both parties having a good grasp of spoken (for listening to the location) and written (for entering it in the app) English. English spelling is unpredictable and the W3W word list includes homophones and plurals, so if you get a non-fluent speaker then your risk of a cold takeaway is high.
OS grid ref (aka what ten numbers) or Google plus code would probably much more reliable in this instance. And if you're transmitting location by text, it doesn't matter which system you use because there's no human interpretation required.
doc1442@reddit
Yeah W3W is terrible, but I was running on from above. I was alluding to OSGB with my point about a non-proprietary system :)
scarletcampion@reddit
Oh yeah, with you all the way! We don't realise how lucky we are with the OS :)
doc1442@reddit
I mean it is great put plenty of other countries have national mapping authorities and local coordinate systems. It’s far from unique to the UK. Outside of that lat/long is also fine.
How_did_the_dog_get@reddit
W3w is arguably the worst because of the language thing.
The concept is great, except for the fact not everyone speaks English, and American English at that. And probably California American English which is in no way like anything else.
Dry_rye_@reddit
w3w auto suggests places as you type though, I'd expect anyone smart enough to have a drivers licence to be smart enough to click on the one that's in the right country.
And if someone text it to you there's no way to go wrong
How_did_the_dog_get@reddit
Autocorrect cannot failure?
Dry_rye_@reddit
I'd still expect you to be able to pick the right country
If you meant egalitarians.cheese.flamengo and it Autocorrected to egalitarian.cheese.flamengo when you start to type it in and the suggestions show you three varients, one is in Bulgaria, one in East Timor, and one in Fife I would hope you could tell your friend in Fife hasn't suddenly moved to eastern Europe.
Also copy+paste exists for this very reason
halliwell_me@reddit
What's different about California American English?
How_did_the_dog_get@reddit
How do new York Americans sound compared to Alabama?
From my understanding California is very average sounding, it is TV American. The same as BBC English isn't the English you speak at home.
There are quite a few videos on why w3w doesn't work and pronunciation is one of the biggest flaws.
St2Crank@reddit
Wasn’t W3W created by english people? I’m sure I read one of them is one of the question setters on only connect.
How_did_the_dog_get@reddit
Royston apparently. Will fix.
Imagine if it was made by Royston vaysey (the person not the place)
doc1442@reddit
Imagine if we used some sort of numbers that transcend that and are resilient to transcription errors (eg you miss by a few hundred metres, rather than continents)
How_did_the_dog_get@reddit
A friend has a memorial tree.
One word its got 1 if not 2 words that could be plural. Like places, i searched it and was very confused when it was India.
scarletcampion@reddit
Don't forget all the other language versions which don't interoperate :)
Dry_rye_@reddit
The thing is, when you start to type in a w3w it comes up with suggestions.
So if you're sensible you can judge for yourself "oh must be that one it's in surry the other two are in Siberia and Slovakia" and if you aren't sensible you can ask the other person first.
If the other person is sensible they will also have clicked on a few squares until they spotted one that seems legible.
If someone can't understand that you are saying "hand.goats.fury" they are probably not going to get a string of numbers perfect either.
Super-Hyena8609@reddit
W3W requires you to keep checking your phone or whatever. House numbers, being sequentially arranged along a natural line (the street) have many advantages.
If you're at house no. 3 and the next address is house no. 5 on the same street, you can make some pretty good guesses at its location without technological assistance. If you only have W3W the next address could be anywhere on the planet.
Ok-Airline-8420@reddit
Even then, not always. i lived in a very old street at number 28. The house across the road was number 72. Next door was 32, number 30 didn't exist, and the number sequence was mixed up with named houses with no numbers in between.
Cuznatch@reddit
My road is a bit like this. Number 8 is about 100m to the left of our house, on the opposite side of the road.
Number 10 is half a mile to the right, on the same side of the road as mine. There's about 16 houses in between.
doc1442@reddit
Yeah, exactly. Which is why a coarse sort and a fine sort (ie postcodes and numbers) is great for delivering stuff to all houses (ie mail) but not for locating and individual.
The fact the W3W needs constant babysitting is a W3W problem. OSGB refs exist.
Fearless-Dust-2073@reddit
This is super annoying whenever you need to ask someone for directions to a place using Google Maps. People don't seem to realise that a post code contains multiple addresses and doesn't point to one specific house.
dwair@reddit
Haha :) My postcode covers about 15 square miles with less than a dozen registered addresses. All of them are house names as any sort of numbering would just be "No1, unmarked road, local village, postcode".
Bit of common sense and an OS map and it's fine. Most digital systems like Google / Garmin ect fail dramatically though.
MokausiLietuviu@reddit
I was recently taking friends on a weekend away to rural Cumbria. I gave them detailed instructions and arranged a convoy.
One of my friends completely ignored this and was adamant that she'd just follow her sat nav to the postcode. I had to say no about 5 times and explain that that one postcode can literally take you to either side of a mountain and unless youd like do the mountain pass with a grade of 25ish% in the dark in your Fiat 500, join the bloody convoy and let me guide you.
Newsaddik@reddit
The building I live in has two postcodes, one for the bottom half and one for the top half.
CrabAppleBapple@reddit
To be honest, it's really annoying not just having a number. Or having a number, but they're not logically ordered. Or having a number but the number is about the size of a beer coaster and a similar colour to the building. Or having a number but most of the plate it's on is twee pictures of shit that obscure the number.
I'm not bitter.
islandhopper37@reddit
The city of Berlin has a legal requirement that all house numbers must be visible from the street and illuminated during the hours of darkness, to make it easier for police and emergency services to find addresses.
Berlin is also interesting in that it has used two separate numbering systems for house numbers. The first house numbers were introduced at the end of the 18th Century. Streets were numbered using the "horseshoe principle", that is to say, the numbering starts at one end and all properties on one side of the street have consecutive numbers. At the end of the street the numbering changes sides and then continues in the other direction, so that the highest and lowest house numbers are at the same end of the street opposite each other. Only a few years later, some suburbs (which at the time were independent settlements) started to use a "zig zag" pattern with odd numbers on one side of the street and even numbers on the other side. After Greater Berlin was formed in 1920, the zig zag pattern was the only practicable one, and from 1927 onwards, all new streets had to be numbered using this method.
Here is a map that shows the numbering system for each street: https://hausnummern.tagesspiegel.de/
rossburton@reddit
The road I live on has 340 houses and numerous spurs, and about five houses that have switched to names. I’d hate to be a delivery driver without the official map to know that The Gabbles is actually a name for number 140!
The correct answer is obviously “use a better map with house identifiers on”…
Belle_TainSummer@reddit
Streets with mixed names and numbers are hell for delivery drivers to find. Especially since most delivery apps still use numbers. I have a cutesy name on my house for fun, for myself, but the number is on there too and that is what goes on the address field for deliveries, because I want my stuff. Only exclusively use a house name if the number of bedrooms is in double digits and you have your own set stables and outbuildings. Otherwise, the name is just a bit of fun for yourself and not an address.
SpeedingViper@reddit
There is stables and like 5 acres of land, we bought it with the house name already established as the address. We do have it but above the front gate, ironically it's probably the easiest to spot address out of any of the numbered or other named houses here.
schmerg-uk@reddit
I used to live in an old cottage on quite a busy road, but none of the houses had numbers, just names, and trying to get a food delivery etc could be a nightmare... first they'd think it was a prank call (cos the name sounded so quaint - "Is that for Mr Ratty or Mr Mole by any chance?") and then no matter how I described it ("on the corner of such and such a road", "the one with .... next to ... by the sign ...", what3words etc) I'd end up having to stand and wave at passing cars hoping to identify the one delivering the food.
And I kept a print out of a map of the road where I'd then labelled the named houses that I could give to various bewildered couriers looking for "The Cottage" and "Rose Cottage" and "Thatch Cottage" etc
Crafty_Jello_3662@reddit
They just want to know where you are in the road so they don't have to read every single house name on the street. Do your neighbours have numbers? If you tell them your next to number 87 or whatever then you'll get your food quicker
Jacktheforkie@reddit
I wish they’d show up on Google maps, would make deliveries easier
oddjobbodgod@reddit
Yeah me too, it makes it can make it a PITA giving (non-locals) directions here now that everyone relies on sat-nav. Interestingly our house does show up on Apple maps in search, as well as all our neighbours who don’t show up on Google Maps either.
Jacktheforkie@reddit
Yeah, sometimes I was lucky enough to get a W3W address
Beautiful_Account499@reddit
Its a common misconception that the Royal Mail is in charge of addresses but theyre not. They were just one of many crown agencies that kept national lists of addresses. The Brown labour govt created a national gazetteer of addresses maintained by local authorities and and new agency called GeoPlace after years of pressure. It brought structure to the diverse list of addresses held by a number of national agencies and contains addresses from the Ordnance Survey (things they have mapped), local authorities (planning, local taxation). Assessors and the Land Registers (hmlr and RoS) data is also used. The national gazetteer is then matched against the Royal Mails list. Local authorities are responsible for the numbering and street names, the Royal Mail assigns your postcode. This works very neatly with the responsibilities around house building, alterations and demolition. Postcodes change more often than you think, and were introduced in 1973. More detail on the national gazetteer is here - https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/03d48dba-529b-4bd5-93a5-6d41d1b20ff9/national-address-gazetteer.
tremynci@reddit
The current system of 5-8 alphanumeric characters started rolling out nationwide in mid-October 1959, and that process was complete by 1974.
But big cities like London had been using named postal districts since 1857. In 1917, London's districts were subdivided and numbered, creating the first part of the London postcode. That system was extended to cities nationwide by 1934.
LibraryOfFoxes@reddit
I remember the jingle from the old (maybe 1980s?) advert to try and get people to use them.
"Pass on your postcode, you're not properly addressed without it!"
tremynci@reddit
The US Postal Service had a whole character to get people to put postcodes on mail: Mr ZIP.
jaredearle@reddit
Our house has a name. The road we’re on doesn’t appear on our official address which caused issues when applying for a credit card, and the village we live in also doesn’t feature.
Our address is “cottage name, town ten miles away, postcode” and we’re not in a remote area, but the postie knows where we are.
HugoNebula2024@reddit
When I worked in a rural area, all the houses were called, "Beware Of The Dog".
Beautiful_Account499@reddit
There is more need for addresses than holes in doors for letters and parcels. The Royal Mail is just one of many national lists of addresses.
EarnestHolly@reddit
Yep, but OP was specifically asking about mailing addresses…
oddjobbodgod@reddit
Yes, my house just has a name :)
Own-Nefariousness-79@reddit
My house does not have a number or a street name. It does have a post code.
MLMSE@reddit
If you look at that road all the houses have names rather than numbers. This is quite common for wealthy roads like this one appears to be.
The house named 'Greenwood' does not appear to still exist today. It may have been renamed by a new owner or could have been knocked down.
NeilJonesOnline@reddit
This is not even rural; road names are for amateurs. In truly rural areas, you'll get addresses like "The Old Priory, Little Snigglewich", or "Cotterall's Farm, Finknottle". I had years of experience of driving my kids to parties at addresses like this where it never even seemed to occur to the host to give any hint other than a punctured balloon at a random point along a 2 miles long country lane, and even if you did ask in advance they'd give you directions like "Oh, you can't miss us, we're about a mile after the old Wagon and Horses pub" (which got demolished in 1973).
FamSender@reddit
It’s a house name. This is not a serious question.
StandardLemonaid@reddit
Huh? You realize houses don't get named in Canada and the US, right? This is definitely a serious question, and it makes sense OP didn't know.
cougieuk@reddit
Explain the White House then ?
StandardLemonaid@reddit
The white house is a government building. Lol...
cougieuk@reddit
And Graceland?
marxistopportunist@reddit
A serious question from the perspective of a rather slow person who can't or won't google things
redrabbit1984@reddit
You're not a serious redditor
xmastreee@reddit
So I had a quick look on Google Maps. Burstow is a tiny village so half a dozen names rather than numbers would be the norm. I didn't find Greenwood, but to give you an example, here's Briar Cottage with just the name on the gate post.
There is a church just up the road, I wonder if they have any records…
bfp@reddit
Yeah they all seem plant related
Eg
Holly House Church Road Burstow Horley RH6 9RG
Cloielle@reddit
Yeah, and people often rename a house when they move in, so I’d say it’s quite likely to be a long-lost house name.
Hefty_Anywhere_8537@reddit
Old houses don't have numbers, but names. I've never lived in a numbered house.
No-Intern-6017@reddit
Some houses in the UK have names as opposed to numbers
Sufficient_Spite2684@reddit
If you google "greenwood burstow" you get a property management company:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01281475
which manages a block of flats called "Greenwood" on Green Lane, which is about a mile away from Church Road, but crucially appears to be an unmarked spur off of Church Lane, which itself is a spur from Church Road. There are no street signs even now on Google street view as far as I could see so it's entirely possible that there was a bit of confusion as to which road was which.
The block of flats is a 1970s construction by the looks of it:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/details/97826a15-4050-4c9d-9152-ec96ac9f34cb?v=media&id=media7
Which checks out when looking at the 1959 map of the area - which incidentally also doesn't show names for either Green Lane or Church Lane:
https://maps.nls.uk/view/189259463#zoom=6.9&lat=3597&lon=1788&layers=BT
Although as it looks like there's a small house where the block of flats is, that may well be the "Greenwood" you are looking for.
The_Six_Of_Spades@reddit
Of all the things I expected to see on Reddit today, the flat I grew up in was not one of them, lol.
I can’t add much to the detective hunt, I’m afraid, other than confirming that Greenwood Flats (I think we were number 4?) is on Green Lane. There’s two blocks of flats there both known as Greenwood Flats. There were a few fancy houses on that lane, it’s possible one of them was the OP’s grandma’s house, but it’s been ~15 years since I lived there, so couldn’t be sure :(
Alas_boris@reddit
Also worth considering that since the letter was sent, the M23 motorway, associated junction and trunk roads to Gatwick airport have also been built. Plus the airport itself has grown from a landing strip in a field to a major international airport.
This usually results in roads being diverted and truncated, and whole communities being displaced leading to inconsistencies in road layouts and numbering.
Fetch_Ted@reddit
Ah! This will help to explain why there appears to be what looks like an EasyJet plan ‘in' the field to the SE of Burstow. It will have just departed from LGW.
yearsofpractice@reddit
Hey u/starbellybear - I’m nearly 50 and my experience suggests that this answer by u/sufficient_spite2684 is the ‘correct’ answer.
As other posters have said, the village church is likely to have records (or indeed congregation members) with memories or records of the people who lived there. Looking at the local church name it’s still active and can be contacted at the following: https://www.windmillchurches.co.uk/burstow-church/
All the very best of luck with your search OP and please do update us on the outcomes - I had a similar-but-opposite experience recently insomuch I discovered that a great uncle from Yorkshire, UK settled in Toronto and has a university lecture hall named after him!
invokes@reddit
This is like 15 minutes from where I live. I can try and visit it this week if you like.
Lexism48@reddit
I live nearby and may be able to help with the search. The address on the letter is slightly incorrect. Near to Burstow is a place called Shipley Bridge. There’s a block of flats there called ‘Greenwood’. The road name today is Green Lane, but older maps suggest that it used to be Church Road which indeed goes to Burstow. Further, from looking at Zoopla the block could well be post war and so would fit with the date stamp on the envelope. I can’t find reference to ‘Greenwood’ as a place name (for a woodland, for instance) and from which a house would take its name. However, the OS map from 1937-1961 has one building on the plot that the flats currently occupy. So that could be it too - ie a house name.
In any case I’m confident thats the location. What3words: ///shower.paper.ports
lucy_wk@reddit
My grandma got a letter that just read 'Marie, Benson', and that managed to arrive!
I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS@reddit
It's quite normal in rural areas even today. The depot receiving the letter into the UK would send it to the main depot in Surrey or possibly in Horley, who would pass it on to the postman delivering in Burstow, who would in turn know where Greenwood is because it's his regular route.
These days, a postcode is used to locate an exact street anywhere in the country, so everything except the house name/number and postcode is actually superfluous when sending a letter. You can still write addresses the old fashioned way and Royal Mail will still get your letter to where it needs to be, but they won't like it because it's less efficient.
Crayons42@reddit
You could try looking at old maps to see if the house names are on there
Boggyprostate@reddit
She lived in a house called “Greenwood”
flapsmagee@reddit
We received mail with just our first names on, and the completely wrong address in the village - luckily, it's a small place, we don't share names with anyone else here, and the postie is a nice chap so we got it anyway!
veryblocky@reddit
It’s very common for houses to have names instead of numbers
N9242Oh@reddit
It's usually big houses on rich roads that don't have numbers in my experience.
Terrible-Group-9602@reddit
It's still quite common for houses to just have names in rural areas.
Chuck_The_Lad@reddit
Greenwood
GuiltyUsedAsparagus@reddit
If you look up Church Road, Horley in Google Maps you will see it is a small rural road with only a dozen houses. Each house has a name rather than a number. Things like “Briar Cottage”, “Burstow Court Manor”, “Melody”, “Treetops”.
This is very common for rural areas, even today. It’s possible that they were originally all part of the same estate, which is why they have names rather than numbers.
I couldn’t find a “Greenwood”, but I did find a “Brockwood” an a “Bellwood”. Some of the names are too blurry to read on Streeview so I’m sure one of the houses will be “Greenwood”
https://maps.app.goo.gl/iTwdoFYmv1kM4RPW8
CiderDrinker2@reddit
If you are really posh, then your surname, the name of your house, and the name of the village are the same.
mralistair@reddit
so there are only about 10 houses on that road so one of them.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/6nxb8K3gS33gFu2F6
it would be the house name though
Actual-Photograph794@reddit
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Burstow,+Horley+RH6+9RG/@51.1572779,-0.1250449,17.33z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x4875f0ecb3b34a69:0x290ed54257b41a56!8m2!3d51.1564682!4d-0.1229315!16s%2Fg%2F1td2yykh?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAwOC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
This is the road. I used to live in Horley until last Christmas and used to cycle through Smallfield to Crawley. Don't know the exact street very well, but you might get some idea from street view? Maybe you have a picture of the cottage / house?
DutchOfBurdock@reddit
She lived at Greenwood (House/Villa/Apartment/Home)
dead_jester@reddit
It’s 2025. My house has a name, no number. This is relatively common in the United Kingdom.
It’s likely that Greenwood was a house back then. It may have changed name or been redeveloped as a multiple occupancy building with numbers or changed to a business building.
rabbithole-xyz@reddit
In areas of rural Austria, houses would be numbered in the order they were built. No street names. Where I currently live, it was only changed a couple of decades ago. A lot of houses now have two numbers, old and new. Must have been hell for new posties back then, lol.
DeapVally@reddit
It's just a rural thing. Some douchebags in towns and cities will give their house a name, to try and sound posher or whatever, but it will still have a number. That's not really the case in small settlements on long roads (because it's not very useful, and more of hindrance tbh) out in the countryside. Hamlets and such.
SatisfactionMoney426@reddit
This address is a bit OTT really, most letters at that time would be addressed like 'fat Ethel with glasses, Rotherham' or Bob at the bar in the Kings Head, Frimley. It would soon get passed on to the right person. I remember Esther Rantzen on TV in the 70s used to read out the most obscurely addressed letters that the Post Office had managed to deliver correctly...
Academic-Gate-5535@reddit
Many places still don't, any small village with a handful of houses wont actually really be on a specific road either. They're just "there".
There's a house near me that has a name (and a number) and the name is hilariously descriptive for anywhere but where it is
Scarred_fish@reddit
Houses only have numbers if they are part of a scheme, it is extremely rare for a rural house to have a number.
Every house does have a UPRN though, Unique Property Reference Number, managed by the local council as part of the national address gazetteer.
This is where utilities, royal mail etc get addresses from, though some are very slow to update their databases.
Source - my job.
developer49@reddit
Finally somebody giving good information on how this works.
Local Councils generally have a Street Naming and numbering officer who has the responsibility for liaising with developers / parish Councils to ensure that new houses and roads on developments are numbered / named in a way that is consistent with policy, the local area and will not cause confusion to emergency services.
In general, in an area where existing houses have names a new house will also have a name. If a numbere area,, a new house will be given a number (in the case of an infill in a numbered area use will be made of suffixes e.g. 3a). There are conventions on how the numbering scheme works depending on if the road is a through road or cul-de-sac.
If somebody wants a house name in a numbered area, it will be stored as an alias alongside the house number which is still allocated to the house.
Scarred_fish@reddit
They do ;) and it's a legal requirement.
However, despite there being a british standard for addesssing since the early 90s (BS7666) it has only been in the past 10 years or so that it has really been pushed, largely because of the emergency services needing more reliably addressing and routing due to the poor standard of GPS navigation systems (partially due to the Royal Mail postcode nonsense) and dangerous apps like What 3 Words.
The new systems are very good though, designing something to fit a modern standard while still working with old addresses was a challenge, but current Gazetteer standards and conventions are very good.
poultryeffort@reddit
Sorry to butt in . While you’re all here ... PLEASE people get clear , easily seen house name and/or number signs for your houses!
I work in urgent care overnight - most Uk roads these days have several hours with little or no street lights. Driving up and down residential roads in the dark trying to find the patient is a bloody nightmare sometimes.
No- in these situations people often aren’t in the frame of mind to think of putting on a porch or hall light .
jugsmacguyver@reddit
The house number over my door is dreadful. But the giant pvc number stickers on my wheelie bins makes up for it!
poultryeffort@reddit
Oh we love those!!! :)
thebobbobsoniii@reddit
Google maps - “church road, burstow”. Boom.
Atlantean_Raccoon@reddit
If you don't live in a city, town or village then you probably won't have house numbers. My parents house is centuries older than the Post Office, no number, but they Post does get delivered, to a random metal box by the road 2 miles from the front door. Parcel deliveries are worse though, before they started with these local collection points it was incredibly hit and miss, I can still recall seeing my 8th Birthday present being ripped apart by sheep after it had been 'delivered' to a field.
Taiga_Taiga@reddit
The "number" is "Greenwood"
In England, a lot of houses had names instead of numbers because that were unique, and not part of a street. The name described where the house was
This is why we get names like "Moorsbottom" and "Highfield". Because the postman would know it was the house on the high field, or at the bottom of the moor.
OwineeniwO@reddit
If you go to a local Facebook group they can probably tell you where Greenwood is, someone might even remember your family.
jugsmacguyver@reddit
I live not far from here and the local Horley Facebook page is a cess pit!
Kleinzeit_987@reddit
We live in a 500 year old house on a street where no houses have numbers. Our postman, Andy, is a complete legend, and we’ve never missed a letter. It’s quite common not to have numbers in rural village locations.
MikeForVentura@reddit
My house doesn’t have a number. On a decent system, I enter my post code and then a drop down list with about 45 properties shows up and I choose mine by name. It’s not identified as being on a street, rather on a division of croft land. Google and other systems can struggle with it.
Plus nobody can agree on spelling so that’s fun.
lovinangelalex@reddit
https://maps.app.goo.gl/aPejAJai1i9nKqrcA
Boring_Intern_6394@reddit
Some houses just don’t have numbers in the UK, this is still true today
sockeyejo@reddit
Most 21st century rural addresses don't have house numbers. The format is usually House/Farm Name Nearest Village Nearest Town County Postcode
If it's actually in a village or hamlet then it might be 3 Church Lane Village Name Nearest Town County Postcode
But the ones that are just on the unnamed backroad off the B3xxx, back in the days before sat navs the owners gave directions that went along the lines of "turn off the B3xxx after the Rising Sun pub and follow the lane for half a mile and then take the right hand turn after the phone box and then the second left once you've gone past the thatched cottage with the white gates - if you get to the pink pub, you've gone too far and need to turn round and go back to the thatched cottage. After the second left, take the right turn just before the bridge and we're two miles down the road. You can't miss us - you go past a bungalow on the right, and half a mile after that there's a big house set back from the road on the left with gates and then a farm track next to them and just before the big bend there's a lovely oak tree on the left and we're right after that. If you get to the dairy farm, you've missed us."
Competitive-Fact-820@reddit
Even with Sat Nav you still need directions like this for very rural areas.
I work for a transport company and we deal with a lot of rural addresses and love it when the person who requires our service starts with "we are really hard to find, gives us the What Three Words followed by explicit directions based on things like pubs, gate colours, field with sheep, incredible old tree that looks like an Ent.
sockeyejo@reddit
For years we used to give directions to our farm based on a pair of pine trees until one was blown down in a storm and its sibling fell down the following winter. It took us ages to come up with a suitable replacement that, crucially, could be seen in the dark and rain (necessary after a mishap with Christmas visitors who were unable to tell the difference between silver and white gates 🙄)
Tattycakes@reddit
I just had a flashback to Marian Keyes describing how Irish people give directions just like this! She’s like “just give me the address and I’ll put it in the satnav” and they’re like “nah, sure why’d you want to be faffing around with that? Just take the third left after the house that used to have the bright blue door, you remember, where Bridget’s uncle’s hairdresser lived, then…” etc 🤣
shopontheborderlands@reddit
I regularly had people insist they could satnav to my house in Cornwall, and for a long time, their satnav would take them up a tiny lane on the wrong side of a major river and leave them in a woodland glade far from home.
Things got better when Google maps came along so you could mark a home-based business with a pin, but it was still hit and miss. Partly because there was another village with the same name about 40 miles away that Google thought should get priority, but also because there's no mobile signal in the village so you had to warn people to check their phone before they came down the hill.
tryingtoappearnormal@reddit
Its fairly common in the uk for houses in villages to have names instead of numbers, its a pain in the arse if youre a delivery driver because the smaller villages often have 1 postcode for 30 houses on 3 roads so unless you know where the house is it can take a while to find
Death_God_Ryuk@reddit
There's also a bad habit of naming lots of them with variations on the same thing, e.g. a cluster of houses called 'The Mill', 'Mill Barn', 'Mill Cottage', 'Mill Farmhouse', 'Old Mill', 'Lower Mill', etc.
No-Parsnip563@reddit
My house doesn’t have a number.
Next_Needleworker892@reddit
Looking at house sales, there was a "1, Greenwood, Green Lane" that sold in 2022. Green Lane branches off Church Lane, so that may be it. I think it's this building:https://maps.app.goo.gl/Bj1aoydSTG64PH9V7 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/details/97826a15-4050-4c9d-9152-ec96ac9f34cb
MASunderc0ver@reddit
There is a place called Greenwood Flats off church lane near burstow. Looking at the old maps there was a big house near by that probably owned the land . Maybe as you said the Greenwood family lived on Westlands house which was on church lane and that name has been passed down to the modern day Greenwood Flats.
Ultramolek@reddit
The house name, Greenwood is enough. Most old houses you can put the name straight into googlemaps and it'll find your house.
laudable_lurker@reddit
House numbers aren't necessary even nowadays when a house just has a name. e.g. my house has no number but the houses either side of me do. 'Greenwood' is most likely the name of a house on Church Road.
collinsl02@reddit
It's common for houses built well after others in a street (I.E. in what was someone's garden) to have names so the house numbering doesn't get changed for the whole street. If a house is converted into flats inside the same building then that would get letters instead, since it's a subdivision of an existing number.
DameKumquat@reddit
My parents house was in an old manor house that had been split into five houses and three flats.
The flats were numbered 1,2,3, 17 Our Road. The houses had names, but no.17 stretched about a quarter mile. I spent a lot of time telling people Our House is the end of 17 next to no.19.
If you came from the right side, it was 21, 19, then us, just like a typical row of semis. If you started at the other end... Got to know the neighbours very well.
spectrumero@reddit
It's not a 60s thing, a lot of houses (not just rural ones) don't have a number. None of the houses on my street have ever had a number.
UK addresses are complex. Search for the PAF Programmers Guide to see how many pitfalls there are in writing an address formatter for the UK. In the structured data, you basically have (excluding the elements to do with business addresses)
sub building number - for example flat or sub unit.
building number or building name - the building itself. (Just for fun, sometimes the building number is not an integer, it's written out, e.g. "Sixty" instead of 60).
thoroughfare (the road or street the building is on)
dependent thoroughfare
double dependent locality
dependent locality
post town
post code
Some business addresses can have 9 or 10 address lines when properly formatted! It's a bit insane when you realise a country the size of the USA can make do with just two or three address lines for every address in the country.
Nice_Conversations@reddit
I know plenty of people already replied saying there are many houses with names instead of numbers and some don't even have street names.
However, sometimes the mail arrives without even names, places, post codes etc. Like this one where it had a life story on it:"Friends with the fella who runs the butchers" - funnily enough, this is more common than people think.
So, the "green woods" might have been quite literally, that there was a piece of woodland with evergreen trees and the person lived near those green woods - rather than it being the name of the house.
False-Strawberry-319@reddit
Go to https://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode
Type in church road, burstow, Surrey. Leave Greenwood out. This will give you about 20 addresses. None of which is Greenwood, but there's a couple in there with only business names, and no house name.
It could be one of them, or they might have changed the house name over the years. My best bet would be Melody as most of the other names are tree related.
You could write physical letters to all the addresses, including an email address. This way you might get some unexpected but relevant history.
Or/and find a local history society for Horley and see what they've got. I'd do both.
ratscabs@reddit
Have a look at publicly available census records, which will list all the addresses on that street and may shed some light on things. Obviously it will depend on when the house was actually named, but you can current view the 1921 census as well as the 1939 Register (a pseudo-census carried out at the outbreak of WWII).
Playful-Bid3787@reddit
So far on Church Road I've found the following for RH6 9RG;
20 Properties with house names (Businesses not included), no Greenwood, however please bear in mind that property names can be changed by the owners, you may have better luck searching the HM Land Registry (down for maintenance today)
You can find if a property's name has changed in the UK by checking the official records at HM Land Registry, which records ownership changes including name changes. Search the online register for a free property summary, which may include an updated address, or pay a small fee to download the full title register for a detailed history. If you can't find it online, you may need to request an official search of the index map or visit your local archive for historical records.
Online through HM Land Registry
St Bartholomew Church, The Rectory, Rectory Cottage,
Bartlemy,
Briar Cottage,
Brookwood, Mucky Pupz Brookwood
Burstow Court,
Flamstead Hall
Holly House,
Holly Hurst, Branching Out Landscaping Holly Hurst
Meadow Cottage,
Miilcroft, Melody,
Moat End House, The Garden Flat Moat End House
Shurbridge Stud,
Southview,
Tanglefield,
The Coach House,
Tree Tops,
Wymondham,
Town & Country Landscaping,
justanoldwoman@reddit
My rural house doesn't have a number or a street name now.
FakeBotSimp@reddit
I found an address in Surrey called Greenwood in Shipley Bridge, don’t know much about the area but it said that Shipley Bridge (or at least the Shipley bridge inn) is in Burstow
Greenwood, Green Lane, Shipley Bridge, RH6
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/150399884#/?channel=RES_BUY
Jacktheforkie@reddit
As a multi drop driver these numberless properties are a pain in the arse, I have to deliver to tanglewood on farm road, but there’s 200 houses here, with numbers I can look and see 67-69 and know I need to go that way to find 106
SnooCats903@reddit
That's still totally normal for a rural UK address. The first 24 years of my life I lived in 2 houses, neither had numbers.
Gingersnapandabrew@reddit
A village where I used to live only had named houses, no numbers anywhere. Helpfully there was a map of all the names in the middle of the village, and all the names matched on a street - e.g. one street was all tree names, another flowers.
JustUseAnything@reddit
Greenwood. It says right there.
Oilfreeeggs@reddit
I live in a house with no number or road name - just name of house , small hamlet name , town postcode for the address
MillyMcMophead@reddit
I'm similar with no number or road name. It's just a house name, the name of the nearest hamlet over a mile away, small village name miles away then postcode which takes you to the small hamlet over a mile away.
I always give delivery drivers the What 3 Words address but so many of them still use the postcode. I'm forever getting calls asking where we are and I know the driver will be sat in the hamlet looking confused.
On the plus side I can recite the directions from there in my sleep. We do have a big luminous house sign by the road which helps a bit.
AlternativeGreedy787@reddit
As a delivery driver I use an app called PostTag to find the pricese location of addresses that are house names. There is no evidence of "Greenwood" in Church Road, Burstow so maybe it was a property that has been renamed or demolished?
Figgzyvan@reddit
I had to go to a named house recently. It was ‘name house, opposite No2’
Quarky1968@reddit
I remeber 'testing' this as a kid. Would send postcards to relatives with just their name/street name, no number, no postcode. - some would get there, some not. Back when machines did less of the work.
Fyonella@reddit
Not just the 1960s. Plenty of houses, especially in rural areas have names rather than numbers.
I’ve lived in one myself, it was about 1/3 mile outside a village. The houses were numbered up to the edge of the first field on the outskirts. After that field the houses had names rather than numbers.
In that situation, the house had been there for 50 years before the numbered houses had even been built on that lane so I would think it wasn’t deemed necessary to force a number on the existing houses.
p1antsandcats@reddit
I would guess Greenwood was/is the house name and it's on Church Road. The house could have been renamed or could be gone altogether.
manic_panda@reddit
Where have been living that this is the first time you're hearing of a house name.
essexboy1976@reddit
Lots of houses don't have numbers, especially in villages. The house I grew up in didn't, not that of my wife, nor out house now. Houses with names are pretty common in villages.
Squiggally-umf@reddit
Your Nan had a house name instead of a house number and she lived in Surrey. She was reet posh.
FOARP@reddit
They still don’t?
If your house is on a country road, it can still just have a name and not a number. The only difference now is they’d have a post-code.
MidlandPark@reddit
Even in London, plenty of houses in the leafy suburbs just have a name
ciphd@reddit
Wait until you find out that small villages in Ireland don't even have street names. I used to work for a florist network with operations in Ireland and whenever a delivery driver struggled and our customer could not provide an eircode (post code that is individual to every registered property, amazing thing) they would just say to knock on any door as "everyone knows where she lives".
Yama_retired2024@reddit
In the 1960s in rural towns and villages.. the local postman would most likely of known everyone and would of known what house to deliver that mail
nivlark@reddit
Burstow is one street with about a dozen houses. Then and now, it's indeed quite common for houses in that kind of settlement to be referred to by name rather than by number.
Severe-Plum-2393@reddit
There’s also a plane parked in the field 😀
craigwelsh@reddit
I was expecting a small prop plane. Thats a decent sized 2 engine passenger jet!
Severe-Plum-2393@reddit
Maybe Gatwick next door run out of hangers
craigwelsh@reddit
🤣 looks like it has just taken off from Gatwick and caught over that field. Fun find.
Pure_Grapefruit9645@reddit
It’s a nightmare for delivery drivers
stairway2000@reddit
Loads of places don't have numbers. You don't need a number if you have a name. That house name was Greenwood.
Aggravating_Speed665@reddit
Jeez, have you ever been outdoors?
AbbreviationsCold161@reddit
My house has a name, then High Street. No number. Not that uncommon today. And our post arrives, barring the foibles of the dyslexic postie.
RelevantPoetry9770@reddit
It’s another quirky English thing. All of the names are very unoriginal however. I live in a house with a very similar name to about three neighbours. It was fun when one of them had a stroke last year.
Mischeese@reddit
Greenwood is the name of the house. On the bright side Burstow is super rural if you go to National Library of Scotland online maps for Burstow you can see which houses were on Church Road in the 50s and 60s compared to now.
Houses get renamed or numbered all the time so it just might not be called that anymore.
Horley also has a local history group of FB and that probably covers Burstow, so maybe worth asking on there if anyone who knows that house.
Bozzaholic@reddit
I live in a house without a number. My house is less than 10 years old but all of the houses on my road are named. I personally hate named houses but the one I live in is lovely, would prefer if it was like “number 10” instead of the pretentious name
IAmLaureline@reddit
I was brought up in a house with a name and a street address. My mum still lives there. Very common.
lardarz@reddit
I grew up in a house with just a name, no street number, and it wasn't as rural as the place on your envelope.
There's no houses called Greenwood on Church Rd.
Here's the block of flats on the site that someone else referenced, which was built in the 1970s, possibly on the site of an original house called that, but which is a bit further away.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/details/97826a15-4050-4c9d-9152-ec96ac9f34cb
51.15194249630339, -0.13195765894202985
its possible the roads have been changed a bit or renamed since then
AndrewShute@reddit
a lot of rural addresses only had names & street names not numbers.
Exact_Setting9562@reddit
There's only about 20 properties on that road now. There was probably less then. The local postie would have known which one was Greenwood.
spynie55@reddit
It looks like there are only 4 or 5 houses on Church Road. It's quite neat Gatwick airport - hence the airbus in the google maps image - I don't think it's a feature.
mellonians@reddit
I know this road and I've been in one or two of the houses on it. It's a fairly normal for houses (particularly in rural areas) to have names instead of numbers. It's a minority though and those addresses can be hard to find. Especially at night! Delivery drivers hate them! There's nothing stopping me getting rid of house number 69, completing some paper work and saying my address is now "Greenwood".
There is currently no house called Greenwood on Church Road, Burstow. This will mean it was either demolished, or more likely someone moved in and changed the name. The only thing that's different about that address and nowadays is that the address would currently read as the address now has a postcode. It may have had a postcode then but they took a while to roll out and some people just didn't like to use them. Kind of how the US is experiencing expanded zip codes.
Greenwood Church Road Burstow Horley RH6 9RG
You can start your detective work or get a feel for the place by using the Royal Mail address finder. Thankfully the whole road has the same postcode.
Open up Royal Mail find a postcode and enter RH6 9RG. You'll get a drop down list of every current address.
You could go into stalker mode and write a letter to each of them, there's not that many. I'd start with the church personally.
Have a look at the CROW map. Each county council (local government) has their own and this shows each registered address point.
Surrey County Council CROW map
Take a stroll on streetview
Agreeable-Copy-4373@reddit
My father told me when I was little that all it took for the post to find you was your postcode and name and the Royal Mail could work out where you lived? I assumed (as an 8 year old 😂) they had some sort of register, maybe that’s what happened here
Good-Gur-7742@reddit
I’ve never lived in a house with a number, only ever houses with names.
Severe-Plum-2393@reddit
Mrs bucket over here 👆
Good-Gur-7742@reddit
Hahaa, my aunt was an absolute mrs bucket. She once fired a cleaner because she had the audacity to call her by her first name. Awful woman.
I’ve only ever lived in tiny rural hamlets, none of the houses in said hamlets have had numbers. But sadly also never lived anywhere that we can get a takeaway delivered.
collinsl02@reddit
There were army regiments in the 1970s that still fined their officers bottles of champagne for having female (girl)friends that "lived in a numbered house"
Good-Gur-7742@reddit
That’s hilarious!
malcolite@reddit
My folks lived on a small new-build estate. All the plots had pre-appointed house numbers, and when the houses were built they’d be added to the post office database. The people who moved into plot 13 a year earlier didn’t want to have ‘an unlucky house number’ (the peasants) so they registered themselves as number 20 — my parents’ plot. My folks, unaware of this, were also registered as number 20, with consequences that I’m sure you can imagine. They had no choice but to name their house instead, so that the postie and delivery drivers knew where to deliver.
Marcus_Morias@reddit
Get on to Royal Mail
collinsl02@reddit
I'm sure they'd just love to charge you to set up a historical research division, it would be a nice profitable sideline.
Marcus_Morias@reddit
You don't know the RM
Exact-Put-6961@reddit
Googling produces "Greenwood Flats" in that village
lostandfawnd@reddit
Thank fuck she didn't live in Ireland, they only had postcodes (eircodes) in the last decade..
Letters like this got delivered "Your man Henderson, that boy with the glasses who is doing a PhD up here at Queen's in Belfast. Buncrana, County Donegal, Ireland"
twentiethcenturyduck@reddit
Pre WW1 the houses in our village didn’t have names or numbers, the postman knew where everyone lived.
The Great War brought enforced change and the houses were all named.
So now of the 130 houses in the village only about a dozen have numbers, mainly the newer ones and a few where the house has been split into two.
Pedantichrist@reddit
A house named Greenwood on Church Road.
Not all houses have numbers.
Do_not_use_after@reddit
The village I used to live in had three houses called "The White House". The postman knew the names of the people who lived in each.
Maximum_Scientist_85@reddit
Going back to the late 1980s, my great gran’s house in the Cotswolds didn’t even have a house or road name. It was just
Mrs XYZ Donnington nr. Broadwell Gloucestershire
It was only when she passed away and my granddad took on the house that he gave it a name. The road still hasn’t been named!
just_some_guy65@reddit
I live in a city, apart from the missing postcode, that address has the same level of information as mine. My road does not have numbers, this is very common.
Key_Seaworthiness827@reddit
I lived on a road with over 100 houses in it. In the mid 90s I received a postcard addressed to 'the house with the green Mini' followed by road name and town. Postie delivered it based on that info
collinsl02@reddit
The postal system uses to be amazing at that sort of thing. Bill Bryson wrote in one of his books that he received a letter in the 70s addressed to "Bill Bryson, writer, Yorkshire Dales".
They even had a "dead letter office" dedicated to finding out where things should be sent based on research and the contents of the letter or parcel or whatever if the address was missing or damaged or badly formed etc. I don't know but I bet it's been cut now to save costs.
SnooBooks1701@reddit
Down Church Road, the houses have signs on them to tell you which house is which, if you can't find it then you go to the pub and ask for directions
collinsl02@reddit
On average the pub is likely closed, and the church only has the vicar in on Sundays for a hour as he's based in another village. Such is modern rural life.
steveinluton@reddit
We live at Old Church Cottage. There's one church in the village. And one cottage next to it. So that works. 'The old bank' in the village I would struggle finding if I didn't know it as it isn't a bank now. (we aren't in Luton any more but I can't change username)
Randomfinn@reddit
I just “drove” on Church Road via Google Maps and most houses had a name on the gate, but no numbers. There were a couple houses with “[name]wood”, so it seems to be the name of the house itself.
CarpeCyprinidae@reddit
Pity the person who ends up with Morning Wood as their address....
orbtastic1@reddit
I live on an A road in a fairly big village. My side of the road is numbered sequentially so when they built on the opposite side they had to use names for the entire street. There’s also other houses built at a different time and they got around that by setting them back slightly and putting another road parallel to mine and numbering them.
I used to have a paper round on this exact route and naming like that quite common. It’s not just little villages with six houses.
YOF626@reddit
There are still lots of houses today that don’t have house numbers
Fruitpicker15@reddit
I know someone who lives in in a cottage in Wales and it only has a name and postcode.
focalac@reddit
Just to add to the other answers, it’s not necessarily a rural house. It’s quite possibly a common three bed semi in a boring, non-descript housing estate. People name their houses sometimes.
themooglove@reddit
My old house didn't have a number. Before What Three Words I used to give out my address via landmarks. I sounded like the old guy giving directions on The Fast Show.
jakedorset@reddit
It doesn’t exist on the database on Royal Mail. postcode finder Maybe it was sold and renamed?
jakedorset@reddit
Maybe if a kind Redditor had time, then a look through the local councils planning portal might show what happened, especially if you had a date range than Granny passed away. Then if it was sold and turned into flats there’s a good chance that record is available online. I know my house is from the early 70’s and appears on our planning portal with lots of associated paperwork. The postcode for church Road, burstow is RH6 9RG, so there’s a start.
terahurts@reddit
Lots of good answers already about house names. Your other guess about it being a family name is also possible. A postman in the 60s in a rural village would almost certainly know the names of the residents and where they lived, but if that was the case I'd expect it to be addressed 'c/o the Greenwoods' or 'c/o Mr/Mrs Greenwood' rather than just "Greenwood" so I think it's more likely that it's the name of a house.
You could try contacting the local church. There might still be people attending it that were living there in the 60s that can tell you more.
mylittlemudkip@reddit
Some houses don't have numbers, they just don't. My grandma's house was at the end of a long private road, no number. My boyfriend when I was a teenager lived in a house on a row of houses in a relatively rural area and they all had prominently displayed names too. I imagine in those times the local postman was a longterm fixture, and learned which house was which rather quickly!
Flaramon@reddit
In rural areas of the Isle of Man, it's still acceptable to not include the house number.
It is increasingly getting out dated, but just twenty years ago - I could communicate with my grandparents by name and general location. The communities were tighter, the postmen were friendlier and knew everyone by name. In once case, where the postie did not know the addressee (rare), I've had a postie knock and ask for information. Back then, I could get in any taxi and say "I'm going to my grandparents" and more often than not, the taxi driver knows me and exactly where to go.
The relationship between the community and posties is very strong: since no one locks their doors over there, familiar posties will just walk in and drop your parcel on the kitchen table.
publiusnaso@reddit
Our house doesn’t have a number, and technically our street doesn’t have a name (the post office lists it as “Road through”, but everyone calls it Main Street. This is not unusual at all. Greenwood is the name of the house. Sometimes, for large houses, the name is listed on the Ordnance Survey map of the area. That might be worth a look.
chewmypaws@reddit
Millions of houses don't have numbers.
madmaxcia@reddit
Greenwood is as probably the name of a house or cottage on Church Road
AllRedLine@reddit
My rural house, which was built 6 years ago, doesn't have a house number. It's extremely common for properties - particularly in the countryside - not to have numbers, but names instead. Some places - such as the village I live in - don't even have formally adopted road names, so you just have to put '[house name], [village], [postcode]' as your address and hope they can find you.
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