street numbers

[HAWKE]

why do streets have odd & even numbers on different sides. why cant they just follow on

[squarebear]

It's based on the fact that houses are numbered from the town centre or a main street outwards.

[whiskeysheri]

To make them easier to locate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_numbering

[danroll]

If a road 5 miles long has 500 houses on it, numbered 1-250 on one side and 251-500 on the opposite side. this would leave you with houses 1 and 251 opposite each other. Also houses 250 and 251 would be 5 miles away from each other. trying to find a specific house would be a nightmare.

It's much more logical to number houses using the current method.

[HAWKE]

now i can see the reason why, thanks to all and a happy new year

[sddsddean]

I once had to do a pick up from a property in a village in Austria and all I had for the address was something like Semmering 52. Well I found the village on the map and hoped I'd find the property once I got there. Amazingly there were no street names. When you built a house in the village you just took the next number, the result being driving in and seeing the numbers 27, 4,85,16 etc. It took me 30 mins to find the place after asking 4 people! Must be a nightmare place for a new postman!

[Lily_b]

On my road the numbers are consecutive, although it only appears to be in our area of town. Delivery drivers and even the local police keep getting confused when looking for specific houses, not helped by the back-to-back houses being numbered in a different order.

[HAWKE]

I'm still no wiser every system as it's merits maybe

[heathfield]

House numbering in the UK was introduced to help the postal system, and houses were numbered in ascending order from the location of the town or village post office, (thus not necessarily from actual town centres).

As towns and villages have grown and merged, this has created the situation where you might find the house numbers in a street suddenly change out of sequence. Increasing numbers may suddenly start to decrease. Odd and even numbers change from one side of the street to the other. That's because the houses were originally numbered from two different post offices, but with urban expansion the two separate sets of numbers now meet.

At least we're more fortunate than those in some parts of the world, were a letter might be addressed to someone 'at the house above the shop of Hassan, the one-armed tailor'!