British houses are identified by number, by name, or by both — and the fact that a house may have no number at all is one of the quieter surprises of the British address system.
The numbering
The usual convention is odd numbers on one side, even on the other, running away from the town centre or the main road. But there is no national rule, and older streets frequently do something else entirely:
- Consecutive numbering — running up one side and back down the other, so number 1 and the highest number are opposite each other. Common in Georgian squares and terraces.
- Gaps and letters — 14a, 14b, or missing numbers where houses have been demolished or combined.
- No 13 — a great many streets skip it, on superstition, and developers still do this deliberately.
Named houses
In villages and on older rural roads, houses commonly have names instead of numbers. The postal address is then the house name, the village, and the postcode — and that is entirely sufficient, because a postcode narrows the address to a handful of properties anyway.
This is legal and normal, though the local council must approve a name and can refuse one that duplicates a neighbour or would confuse emergency services. Changing a house name requires council notification.
The names themselves
British house names run to a small number of well-worn categories, and surveys of the commonest produce a reliably comic list:
- The Cottage, Rose Cottage, The Old Rectory, The Old Post Office, The Old Forge — a very large proportion of named houses are the former something of the village.
- The Barn, The Granary, The Coach House — conversions, saying so.
- Hillcrest, Sunnyside, Woodlands, The Laurels, Fairview — the suburban tier.
- Dunroamin — the classic retirement pun, meaning “done roaming”, and now used mostly as a joke about the genre.
The Old Rectory and The Old Vicarage are so common that they function as a class signal in themselves — the Church of England sold a great many parsonages in the twentieth century, and the buyers rarely changed the name.
Why it works
The system survives on postcode precision. Because a British postcode covers around fifteen addresses, “The Old Forge, GL54 2AB” identifies exactly one house. Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File holds every one, and satnavs, delivery apps and forms all resolve from it.
This is why British forms ask for a postcode first and then present a dropdown of the houses within it, including the named ones — a small piece of national infrastructure that quietly does a great deal of work.
The blue plaques
Worth noting alongside: a house may also carry a blue plaque marking a notable former resident, run by English Heritage in London and by various bodies elsewhere. The rules are strict, and the building must be the actual one the person lived in.