Having lived three-quarters of my life in houses that were named, not numbered, numbering struck me as an urban innovation that I wasn’t particularly keen to embrace. However, I have learned to live with the fact that I am now number 3, even if there are folk about who are convinced that the occupants several generations previous are still in residence (I assume they must now be around 143 years’ old).
A former colleague who runs a well-known blog (well-known in political circles, at least) has a piece up on the origins of house numbering in the UK. On the face of it, this might sound like one of life’s duller subjects. However, having helped him with some of the research, I can assure readers that it is actually rather more interesting than it first appears.
Mark’s challenge is to those sites that lazily suggest that numbering was, itself, a result of the 1765 Postage ActKG1765PostageAct.
The background
I have my friend and former colleague, Mark Pack, to thank for my latest little obsession: unravelling the origins of house numbering in Britain.
Yes, okay, on the face of it this doesn’t sound like the most riveting of subjects, however…
Last week, I received an email from Mark, asking if I had a copy of the Postage Act 1765. Now, you might consider that a strange thing for me to have about my person, but Mark, familiar with my day job, had an inkling I might know where he could lay hands on a copy.
The mystery
Mark was curious as to the basis of various authoritative sources citing it as the origin of street numbering in Britain. Despite it being widely cited (at least, widely cited amongst house numbering devotees), it was never quoted. A quick (actually rather long) google proved he was right.
This is the entry from:
Wikipedia says:
Even says:
In the end, I did turn up a copy – more by luck than judgement. Intriguingly, however, as you can read for yourselves, the Postage Act 1765 makes no reference to street numbering *at all*.
The theory of serendipitous coincidences… Or: historical context
The Britain of the 18th Century was undergoing dramatic industrial changes that created new demands on government, particularly on decisions affecting economic growth and revenue.
Some houses were clearly already numbered by the time of the 1765 Act. Xx reports that …
Indeed, the earliest…
There were a series of postal acts under George IV, which tried to simplify, regularise and codify postal provisions. Fraud was a problem, as was dealing with the network of postal services that lay outwith the tentacular reach of the Post Office because they didn’t go through London: the bye post. Regularising mail traffic between the UK and its colonies was also an issue, all of which led to the introduction of the Penny Post.
It is therefore conceivable that the Act of 1765, with its provisions for making post simpler to administer, combined with technological innovations such as the stagecoach (which debuted in London in xx and which by 17xx dominated the operation of postal services), and the need to increase revenue, led to new ways to make the service efficient. Perhaps that is why by the end of the 18th C xx of houses were numbered.
The real legislative origin?
However, it may be that there is a more definite legislative origin to house numbering. In an interesting piece in “Notes and Queries”, Ambrose Heal, in Volume 183, August 1942, has a brief article entitled xx. In it, he observes:
A list of Acts of Parliament for 1762 reveals the curiously titled London Streets Act. A similiar list for 1765 reveals the equally enigmatically entitled Westminster Streets Act. Neither is available so far as I can find on the web , with even the comprehensive www.legislation.gov.uk only starting its online archive at 1800.
However, the rather brilliant folks at the Parliamentary Archive were able to assist and, indeed, both the 1762 Act and the 1765 Act include statutory requirements for properties to be numbered.
And finally…
On my travels around the highways and by-ways of house numbering, I have stumbled across pieces such as house numbering and “Absolutism*, xx and xx. All quite entertaining.
(Incidentally, those who recall the expenses scandal may be amused to know that it was no less of a problem in the 18th C. To obtain free postage, all a Member of Parliament had to do was sign his name on the envelope, leading to many rascals – MPs and dextrous servants – selling signatures for profit, whilst under-cutting the Post Office. But perhaps that is another post…)
N.B. If you are reading this is 2026 it’s because it’s been sitting in my drafts for some reason, perhaps since 2013!
