Why would my property have changed its postal number 50 years ago?

[Beaverfeaver2]

We moved in to our house 7 weeks ago and with it came all the house sale transactions documented for 100+ years.

I was reading through it today and learnt a lot about the previous owners, their lives and certain things they have done over time to the property.

Its originally dated back many hundreds of years but in its current guise it is georgian and is dated between 1760 and 1800.

One thing I couldn't work out was that in 1946 it changed from being number 3 to number 12.

There is now no number 3 on out street.

I've tried googling as to why this might happen but it's not shed any light on it.

I would ask the neighbours but they have lived next door for 40 years so their knowledge won't have gone back this far.

Does 12 make sense for its position on the street? If it's a 'typical' street with odd numbers one side, even on the other, and in sequence, then being 3 might just have been confusing?

I know a house that was the first built on its side of the street, and they decided to make it 20 just so it would all make sense when the others were built, then they didn't go all the way down to 2, and its opposite one in the mid 30s...

Do ask your neighbour, they might have spoken to a long-gone neighbour about what happened in the area during and after the war. Or you might have a local history society. Maybe ask at your local library. It always amazes me just how much information is out there if you know where to look. Someone will know

What OldBag said - on my street there are quite a few anomalies in numbering and it relates to where there was bomb damage. Say No 1 or No 2 got bombed, rather than rebuild 2 houses in those plots they'd have stuck in a greater number of smaller houses - making No3 become No 12.

This is interesting.
On my street the first house number on the evens side is 18 while on the odd side it is number 1.
I've never found out why and nobody seems to know.

My parents and a friends home in opposite ends of the country changed about 15 years ago around the same time due to changes in boundaries. So still happens.

I would still ask the neighbours. If they moved in ten years after any significant event then it would possibly still have been talked about at the time. Especially as it was forty years ago when life moved at a slower pace.

flipchart Are the houses (or their plots) wider on the side that only goes down to 18? They may have done what happened in the one I know about, picked a number for one end of the street, or the middle, then ended up putting larger houses one side than the other and not getting down to 2 even though they originally planned to.

I could be completely wrong but weird house numbering can be because builders were given permission to build say 8 houses, they were granted the numbers 2 to 16, then the next builder gets 18 onwards.

Due to plot sizes and builders not completing their run, the numbers could jump so sometimes numbers are completely missing, or a person asks for a bigger house to be built so takes up more than one plot. Or if both builders start at the same time, and the first one miscalculates his house sizes, they are out.

In commercial units (personal experience) due to people buying up adjoining units and knocking through then selling on and it being split back into 2 properties the numbers can get really messed up.

Re renumbering, it may be that some houses were removed due to bomb damage. I bet someone at the library can help with your house.

It's strange as all the houses on the street are 200+ years old.

It's a small village with no new developments so a number change for just our house on the street only 50 years ago really stumps me.

If they are very old houses, they could have been all named at one point - then some bright spark at the parish/ council decides that they should all go the modern way and be numbered.

Except not everyone agrees, it all goes cack handed and by some miracle the houses end up all numbered, no logic but no duplicates either.

You can look at really old ordinance survey maps (which you can get absolutely lost in), and track through time. This used to be my day job, and small villages frequently flouted convention

It could be that the owners didn't like the old number, so they just changed it to one they liked!

Or as an extreme way of stopping misdirected post coming to them.

I have absolutely no idea sorry, but I m bl**dy intrigued now!

You must come back and tell us if when you find out.

Things like this do happen for no good reason - our house has a name (also old house) but for some reason it was assigned a random number about 40 years ago. The other houses around here were built more recently, but don't have correlating numbers. Everyone here blames the post office, but I have no idea if this is true. We are the 2nd house on the road but are number 44. Nightmare for visitors who don't know the area... But there might be a more interesting reason for yours!

My Nan told me that her grandparents' home changed numbers during or at the end of WWII. Her grandfather salvaged a door from a bomb damaged house to replace their front door and never changed the numbers on it. Even now the house is no. 42 when there are only a few houses on the road.

Another possibility is that they changed from the old system of numbering down one side and back the other, to the modern system of evens one side, odds the other.

The first house on the even side of my street is No. 10. There is a gap where there is now a substation, but I think there was a house there before WW2. I don't know that there would ever have been enough space for 4 houses, though, because the way the end road goes across at an angle means that directly opposite No. 1 is the middle of a road. The only old photos I've seen of the street are from the 1860s, which is about 40 years before most of the houses were built.

Our street was renumbered or in the case of our house numbered about 15 years ago.... It confuses everybody as instead of the usual convention of alternating numbers on each side of the street, ours is sequential down one side of the street then back up the other side with big gaps for fields it means that ours (85) is opposite no. 9. Half the Lane also has names as well as numbers and as they are old they are generally carved into the stonework/gate posts.

Our road is the same Wonky, starts a No 1 which is actually on the main road that out road is off, the no 2 on the left go all the way down the left and back up the right. Only we have several little turnings off our Road like closes but the numbering goes round them. All very confusing. OP, would love to now why the number was changed if you ever find out ?.