To change house name

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Hi, just looking for a sense check.

i live in an old rural house , somewhere between 200-250 years old, though not as old and certainly not as grand as some other other houses in the area). My house is named but with no number as is pretty much every house in my area.

My house has a very common name, i.e Rose Cottage…. So common that there are about 6 houses within a 1 end digit postcode difference. 3 of which are within close walking distance. Our house is not the oldest of the “Rose Cottage’s either.

We don’t have too many issues with deliveries, although we did accidentally take receipt of the oldest “Rose Cottage’s parcels at some point and when they came to collect, they were very keen on letting us know that their house was here first (by a hundred years or so) …..

But tradesmen, food delivery drivers etc, keep getting sent to the wrong addresses and we are constantly having to direct them by phone or stand outside on the road to flag them down.

Anyways, I know changing the name of a house is seen as a little bit of a faux pas, but I am currently thinking of getting a new door and house sign and it got me thinking…. That maybe I should use this as an opportunity to change my houses name.

So AIBU to consider changing my house name or should I keep it since it has been it’s name for a very long time (I think anyways).

Thank you

Just use what3words.
That's what everyone is doing where I am.

Your house your name your choice.

You cannot always just name a house whatever you want. My parents changed theirs a couple of years ago and had to submit a handful of suggestions and a panel picked the one they could use.

Their house overlooks a park but they couldn’t have park anywhere in the name, nor any mention of the tree or animal the park is known for. This is because there were too many houses with similar names in the village and surrounding area, so it’s confusing for Royal Mail but more importantly for emergency services.

Seems sensible. And fun. You would be making the house your own and actually helping the other ‘Rose Cottage’ owners as well as yourself.
Just don’t call it something horrible like Dunroaming…

Yeah thats what I saw on the council website.

Though I do wonder that since there are so many identical named properties in the immediate vicinity (it’s actually the most common house name by far here) maybe that will make it easier to change as literally any other name would be less common.

Emergency services don’t What3Word though (despite what their advertising says): it’s just too easy to mishear a word over the phone or to misspell something.

They do actually, at least in my county.

Always worth giving what3words. Quite sure it's deliberately made so misspelling of words will make the location so vastly different so it's obvious if you've typed it in wrong.

It is generally easier to have a change application approved if there’s clear reasoning behind it, and there being several other Rose Cottages within a small radius and this causing confusion would be accepted. It will generally be denied if you’re trying to rename to something which would potentially be confusing for emergency services and postal workers (The Old Church if it’s manifestly not an old church!) but otherwise as long as you do a good scope of the neighbourhood to check you aren’t renaming to something else equally numerous it shouldn’t be problematic.

Yeah I would think if you’re making it more uncommon / unique it should be fine.

I thought my parents would face delivery issues having changed the name but it’s been fine. Probably helped that it’s a village and the postie knows their surname, worth having a chat with yours when you do it.

We changed the name of our house - but it was reverting back to an older / previous name (adding back in the word “House” after 2 other words), so probably less contentious. Downloaded the form on council website, filled it in, paid the fee which was less then £100 and it was surprisedly easy.

can you adapt the name you have by adding a word to make it more distinctive?

Subject to the admin PP’s say….Do it! It sounds very practical, and it’s a lovely opportunity. I’d have a lovely time digging through the house’s history to find something relevant but less common.

Are you sure that the needing to flag drivers down is because of the other Rose Cottages, rather than because your road has house names rather than numbers?

One letter difference in postcode, plus the difference road name, should be enough to distinguish. On any estate probably all the roads have a house number 3, and all those house number 3s are only one letter different in postcode too.

By all means change it if you want. I think you have a reasonable justification. I'm just not completely sure it will solve the problem. Partly I'm struggling to pick out from your 3rd and 4th paragraphs whether you are having many problems with deliveries, or not.

Royal Mail seem to find us with no problem.

We have a few address issues, we border two counties and are listed as being X County on say the council tax checker, but Y county on other things, like when you put your postcode in to automatically add address on shopping sites.

We are just outside a rural village on a road that basically goes by two names… long story short it was an old main road until they built a new A Road running parallel to us and the name of our road was changed to link it with another road that spans multiple rural villages. We get a lot of “your address says X road but our satnav says that X road doesn’t start until miles that way and this is Y road”.

Within the last month we have had a lost food delivery driver, a plumber who went on a jolly around 3 villages because he couldn’t find us in the village we are just outside and a gardener who started started inspecting someone else's hedges for a quote!

I guess because of the multiple identical named properties about in very close proximity on the same name road, even though they are in different villages is causing a bit of confusion to people satnavs.

I was just hoping that maybe if we had a more unique name, it might help.

From experience, you'll need to run a check and challenge with the valuation office. That can take up to 12 months to process. Not sure if I'd bother again if I knew the palaver.

Can you adapt the name? Eg English Rose Cottage, Briar Rose Cottage, Rosebay Cottage?
Can you make something for your front garden like a cross between a pub sign and an estate agents sign which says your house name?

House names and numbers aren’t always obvious from the road as signs can be very small. It’s irritating when trying to find somewhere.