General Chat

Would if a house had a name would it still have to have the number. I bet this isn't going to be straight forward. :-)

No, especially in rural areas, I think there are many houses that do not have numbers.

A friend, who lived in a small town has recently moved house, which has never had a number.

I don't think so. In the 1960s my aunty lived in a house called "The Sycamores" and it didn't have a number.

Kath. x

The house we lived in till 2013 ;only had a name. That was in a very rural area but my son lives in a small town and his house has no number.

We lived in a house that had a number - it was number 2.
Dad gave it a name - 'Karenza' - Cornish for .love.

Our address was Karenza, Slades Hill, not Karenza, 2 Slades Hill

I've just done a 'Google' street view, and 55 years later, it's still called 'Karenza;!! :-0

I've also noticed that the other houses now have names, rather than numbers.

I also realise, that, by giving the road name, the house can be 'traced'.
It's a detached house - not painted white when we had it - quite a step-up from the caravan in my avatar, but 7 moves on.
My parents had owned a new semi-detached in Devon, bought when dad left the Fleet Air Arm, but then we moved back to Cornwall, where we had a house (ancient wonky cottage) that came with dad's job - manager of a failing fish factory..

'Karenza' cost my parents £600 in 1967!!

Wow - that was cheap for a detached house in 1967 Maggie. We bought the house we live in today in 1969 - just an end of terrace ex-council house but it cost us £2,650. We paid £150 deposit and the rest on a mortgage.

Kath. x

It's strange isn't it? The house is between two 'villages' - one an ancient village, the other created when a huge council estate was built.
They sold it for a lot more in 1972 - so much more, that they bought a small terraced house in Southampton - very cheap as it was right by the railway line, for me and my sister to live in (I was 15, sister 19), and mum went to live with dad in Saudi - and still had quite a big amount left.

'Karenza' sold for £335,000 in 2018, and now has an estimated worth of £418,411,
The house in Southampton (3 Norman Road) sold for £49,895 in 1996, and , £149,950 in 2006 (it wasn't blue when we lived in it!!! :-S)

I looked at buying my end of terrace council house about 20 years ago - it was over £250,000 then! But then, it's Winchester. I didn't bother.

Now, the average price for houses on the estate has risen to £525,000 over the last year.

House prices shot up in 1970/71. We bought a detached 3-bedroom house in Fareham in 1964 for £3,500, sold it in 1970 for £5,000 and moved to a larger, semi-detached in a nearby village for £6,000.

We were just in time. A few months later a similar house in the same road in Fareham sold for £13,000.

Buying houses always brings to mind Dad's anger when he thought the seller was being awkward with him or had received a better offer after agreeing to Dad's whose offer on a five-bed end terrace had been accepted. Nothing had been signed when the seller decided he wanted to leave all his furniture in the house and he wanted Dad to buy it.

The guy was adamant about leaving it. Dad was equally adamant about not buying it. I don't think he went so far as to say he thought the guy wanted to renege on his acceptance of Dad's offer in favour of another higher one but that is what he and Mum believed.

Mum still wanted to go ahead but the seller got a piece of Dad's mind Evidence of early gazumping perhaps!

I pass the house occasionally and it is well-kept and still looks nice.

My OH and I tried for three houses before ending up with a new-build more than fifty years ago.

We were let down with the first just before we married when we discovered the divorcee had changed her mind about remarrying and was staying put.

The second we lost due to an unforthcoming estate agent. It was the minister's house in the village where my in-laws lived and when we rang at 9 am one Saturday asking to view it he told us it had been sold. Several weeks later mother-in-law (who was treasurer of the mothers' club) discovered that the agent was supposed to have taken viewers and offers until noon the day we rang. We would have had loads of time to view it and put in an offer as we were at my OH's parents around the corner from the house. We discovered also that a builder bought it so you can guess what we thought.

The third occasion was a weird example of how people just can't gauge others and can get a bit uppity.

My father-in-law told us that his 'friend' had told him that a three-bed detached bungalow that his son had built in the next village to my OH's parents was on the market for just under £5,000. Father-in-law told his 'friend' that he thought we'd be interested in it only for his 'friend' to say (exact words), 'It would be far too much for your ...(OH).'

Father-in-law said nothing but about three weeks later he got great pleasure in telling his friend that we'd bought a new house in town for almost twice as much as that bungalow so he'd lost his son a sale!

My best friend from school and her hubby bought a plot of land in a small village in Wiltshire in the 70,s and had a five bedroom house built for under £5000 . There are five other detached property’s in the same Lane but set apart from each other .none of therm have house nos just the names of each house

The lane itself isn’t named either but each house does have a postcode which is needed for a sat nav

Dad had his experience around the mid-fifties.

Ours did not begin until the mid-sixties.

The world is full of strange people. :-0 :-S

My house has a name but no number , and isn't in a street, either - in a small village - and the same goes for some other houses I've l lived in.

Postmen/women struggle until they've learned all the house names!
The postcode doesn't help, as it covers the whole village.

I lived in a house with my parents in a small village in the 60s and it only showed a name, which it was given by the man who had it built, but it did have a number in the phone book entry and in post we received. Similarly I bought a house in 1977 that the previous owner had built for his retirement and he named it from new (apparently from book he had read!) but it showed both the name and number.

When I visited houses in villages in my job years ago, our official paperwork would have a house number, but when you arrived in the village, you'd find most houses just had a name showing and it was a pain trying to find the right one sometimes. I got the impression at that time that some were given numbers originally, but just dropped using them when they gave their house a name.