I came across this question while researching yesterday’s post on the Penny Black -‘how would you know where to deliver a letter if there were no street names and no numbers on the door?’.
Good question, an ...
I came across this question while researching yesterday’s post on the Penny Black -‘how would you know where to deliver a letter if there were no street names and no numbers on the door?’.
Good question, and one that I admit to having never thought about before – have you? When Wenceslaus Hollar visited London from Prague in 1647, he made a wonderful engraving of the city of which the above is a detail. Streets had names which developed from practical roots: Pall Mall was named after the French game of the same title the aristocracy played at this place; Covent Garden was once the garden of a large convent; and Love Lane in the City
– well, you can guess. People sent notes and letters all over the country and somehow managed to describe the place they should be sent. The first recorded instance of a street being numbered is Prescot Street in the area of London known as Goodmans Fields in 1708.
This advert gives the address visually – at the Golden Key, Prescot Street.
This seems to have caught on but we don’t have clear evidence about where and when for every location. However, we do know that by the end of the century the numbering of houses had become well established. The numbering was done on a consecutive basis, not the odd and even principle which we know today – if you lived at number 6 you would have had no 5 on one side and 7 on the other.
Because this was done on an ad hoc basis with no regulation things often became muddled – for example about 1780, Craven Street in the Strand had three sets of numbers. There were irregularities everywhere, and the naming of streets and parts of streets was left to the idiosyncrasy or whim of the owner.
Postman and pillar box 1850s
It was pressure from the public and the newly formed Post Office which led, at last, to government regulation under the 1855 Metropolitan Management Act. For the first time the power to control and regulate the naming and numbering of streets and houses was provided for and given to the new Board of Works. Under pressure from the Post Office the Board started work in 1857 on the simplification of street names and numbering by working through a hit list of the most confusing streets given to the Board by the Post Office and its poor, overstretched postmen.
By the way – these days, if you want to name your house you are perfectly free to do so without needing permission from anyone. However, you must always still include the number of your house for any correspondence.
