[HN Gopher] UK Address Oddities (2018)
___________________________________________________________________
UK Address Oddities (2018)
Author : rwmj
Score : 97 points
Date : 2023-10-09 10:46 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulplowman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulplowman.com)
| dcminter wrote:
| I used to live in a New Road that ended in a gate onto a farm.
| Then the farmer sold the land for development and a furtherance
| of the road was built with access from the opposite direction.
| The gate remained and is firmly locked. So it became necessary to
| explain when calling for a taxi that they should find us on "Old
| New Road, not new New Road." I rather hope those get perpetuated
| into signage at some point...
| comprev wrote:
| I worked for a company once who dealt exclusively with UK address
| data. We compiled it from dozens of sources then cleaned,
| organised it and became a reputable source of truth.
|
| Our end clients were large companies, such as
| utilities/marketing, who sent in their (incomplete/wrong) data -
| and were provided with healthy data.
|
| Such data was used for validating buildings, for example a gas
| company checking for fraud or voting registration.
|
| I learned a great deal about something so often overlooked!
| simonjgreen wrote:
| This reminds me of one of my favourite articles. Falsehoods
| programmers believe about addresses.
| https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| One oddity not mentioned here that I came across recently, (which
| probably would go into one of those "things programmers don't
| know about postcodes" blog posts).
|
| A system that used Postcodes for geocoding (not a great idea) was
| choking on PO Box codes that belong to districts (such as W1A in
| the London W district), but don't really correspond to actual
| street addresses.
|
| This also catches some people out who will unintentionally use
| the PO Box postcode alongside the full street address of a
| business for example.
|
| I've also worked on the TV Licensing systems (yes, the one that
| sends you scary letters every year). That has its own database of
| postcodes and addresses and I got to spend lots of time on the
| funny rules there.
| garblegarble wrote:
| >That has its own database of postcodes and addresses and I got
| to spend lots of time on the funny rules there.
|
| How come the separate database vs the Postcode Address File?
| Sounds like you could write an interesting "Things programmers
| mistakenly believe about UK addresses" post very easily :-)
| f4c39012 wrote:
| In a word, licensing.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| The postcode address file is for places you can deliver mail,
| whereas TV licensing is interested in places that might have
| a TV. There must be some cases where there's no overlap.
| am_lu wrote:
| Not sure if Diamond Geezer is reading this forum, he may be, some
| of his blog posts get reposted in here and sometimes mentions
| extra 100k views. https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| The most brainfuckery'd UK address oddity I've encountered is a
| road in North Manchester which has the same house number twice on
| the same road in the same settlement. In other words, there's two
| houses legitimately called something like "280 Manchester Road,
| Frogstall".
|
| This is because the village is split between two borough
| councils, and each started from 1 when numbering their street. So
| one of them is "280 Manchester Road, Frogstall, Rochdale, Greater
| Manchester" and the other is "280 Manchester Road, Frogstall,
| Oldham, Greater Manchester".
|
| Exasperatingly I can't find the exact address again.
| bloak wrote:
| 443 Manchester Road. See https://paulplowman.com/stuff/house-
| address-twins-proximity/
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| That's it - thank you!
| cwmma wrote:
| In Boston (Massachusetts USA) there are two different 24 School
| Streets, the other one is in a community that were annexed by
| Boston, so you'd say 24 School St Jamaica Plain but saying
| "Boston" isn't wrong either. For a long time Google Maps for
| some reason didn't store the zip code when you put this as your
| work address and would simply choose whichever one was closest
| to the destination.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I used to live on a street like this in Seattle: three blocks
| from its northern end, the numbering scheme resets and begins
| counting back up. Seven houses in the northern section
| therefore share their numbers with houses twelve blocks south.
| Mine was not one of them, but I got many calls from confused
| delivery drivers all the same, looking on the wrong section of
| the street for my seemingly-nonexistent house.
| ralferoo wrote:
| Slightly off-topic, but the address system in Venice is
| fascinating. It's divided into 6 regions, and each building is
| numbered sequentially within that region regardless of what
| street it's in. Sounds weird, but I still remember the address of
| an amazing pizza place I ate at almost 20 years ago: Pizzeria
| Jazz Club Novocento at San Polo 900.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| That sounds a bit like the block-based (rather than street-
| based) addressing used for cities in some parts of the world
| (at least Japan).
| AJRF wrote:
| I lived in a big tower in London a year ago and during my stay
| there my postcode changed twice. Many systems, for example Credit
| Checking agencies, etc very much do not like this and it's such a
| pain to deal with.
|
| It got a new postcode because there were too many delivery points
| for my initial assigned postcode so they split it. Twice.
| simonjgreen wrote:
| The underlying system behind this is Royal Mails augmentation
| of the UPRN system with the UDPRN (Unique delivery point
| reference number) which is meant to be 1:1. There is then a
| further classification for multitenant units called the UMPRN
| (unique multiple residence number)
| michaelt wrote:
| One of the interesting things about UK addresses is the Royal
| Mail issues an official list of all the addresses they know of -
| the "PAF" - as part of their work assigning postcodes to
| buildings.
|
| That means in the UK it's possible to almost definitively
| identify, for example, the longest address.
|
| Whereas in other countries that question is unanswerable, because
| who's to say whether a given building's address is "32 Vassar St,
| Cambridge MA" or whether it's "Massachusetts Institute of
| Technology Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
| 32 Vassar St, Cambridge MA" ?
| simonjgreen wrote:
| Also incredibly useful is UPRN and USRN for properties and
| streets. Almost* every property has a unique identifier which
| is portable across systems.
|
| *I believe the top of the funnel for the UPRN process is
| council tax registration which not all buildings need
| michaelt wrote:
| Yep, the reason I hedged my statement, saying " _almost_
| definitively identify ", is that, as you say, some buildings
| aren't listed.
|
| For example some village halls aren't listed in PAF - perhaps
| because they can't receive mail? And structures like
| electrical transformers aren't listed (even when they're
| built of brick and on their own separate plot of land).
|
| New build properties _supposedly_ appear in the PAF before
| construction is completed - but that depends on both the
| builder, and the PAF user getting the latest updates.
| tialaramex wrote:
| PAF isn't strictly a list of addresses in the sense anybody
| other than the Post Office (and maybe parcel delivery
| firms) would care about.
|
| PAF is a list of _delivery points_ to which they can
| deliver mail. So for example the place I work isn 't
| listed, you can't deliver mail to it even though it's a
| large building with multiple entrances and you'd obviously
| be able to direct people here specifically, but mail "for
| us" goes to some admin building several minutes walk away
| across campus.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >I believe the top of the funnel for the UPRN process is
| council tax registration which not all buildings need
|
| UPRNs are issued for structures that aren't houses or even
| buildings.
|
| 10010457355 is Stonehenge, for example, and 10022990231 is
| the Angel of the North.
| g_p wrote:
| Indeed - there are even UPRNs for bus stops,
| defibrillators, and post boxes.
|
| I have also seen lamp posts, EV chargers and fibre
| infrastructure street cabinets receive them. No need to be
| a house or building!
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| One of the depressing things about UK addresses is that this
| list isn't open data.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The Post Office isn't great, but the ONS maintains a postcode
| list[0] that is open.
|
| [0] https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/ons-
| postcode-di...
| mtmail wrote:
| And some of the usable (still not open) files exclude
| Northern Ireland so it's GB not UK data really.
| mnahkies wrote:
| Energy performance certificates are open though
| https://epc.opendatacommunities.org/ which includes address
| and, in some cases UPRN (unique property reference number)
|
| It's also a pretty interesting dataset to explore
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| SeanLuke wrote:
| > You might assume that the lowest house number would be 1, but
| there are quite a few houses numbered zero.
|
| In Richmond, VA, there is a historic building which at present is
| owned by the Black History Museum. It is 00 Clay Street. That's
| _two_ zeros. It 's the coolest address I know of.
|
| https://www.nps.gov/places/00-clay-street.htm
| NGRhodes wrote:
| My parents house was built before development of the area. The
| original road was built on and another road built on the other
| side of the house, both the old and current street names are
| still valid postal streets (the old street name is still attached
| to the house on the end). The old street name is commonly used to
| refer to the terrace of houses. My parents still have legal right
| of access (recorded on the deeds) across the back gardens of the
| houses that were built on top of the old road.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| These are all quite fun oddities. The one about house number and
| post code being insufficient is reasonably obvious if you've
| lived in a village in the uk where it's pretty common for houses
| to not have numbers (only names like 'the old school house') and
| later be split up into two semi-detached houses hence getting
| separate numbers leaving the village with lots of number 1 or 2
| houses.
|
| So far I've already lived in places where a number+postcode were
| insufficient, where one building had multiple postcodes, on a
| one-word street, and I worked at an '& a half' address. The
| street number thing I've noticed is mostly that as buildings have
| grown since the numberings were introduced, they became much less
| sequential so you see a lot more round numbers - buildings would
| rather be number 20 than 19 (and they'd really like to be number
| one), for example.
| eruci wrote:
| That's why geocoding is HARD. Try "3 Adne Edle Street, London" on
| Bing maps, Google Maps, Openstreetmap, Geocode.xyz - and more.
|
| Or even better, try "Minus Two, Woodend Lane, Cam, Stroud"
|
| No two geocoding services agree on the correct answer.
| MissTake wrote:
| I remember as a young girl growing up being proud that the little
| village I lived in was in the Guinness Book of Records for the
| highest postal address of 2679 Stratford Road, B94 5NH.
|
| Gobsmacked to read, now half away around the globe, that 50 years
| later that's still more or less the case...
| KwanEsq wrote:
| >Or why a house in Owls Green, a village of about 20 houses near
| Ipswich, would be numbered 2820 (cute).
|
| For those who aren't native British/English-speaking, this is
| presumably a cute reference to the village's name of *Owls*
| Green, since at least in the UK the onomatopoeia for one of an
| owl's sounds is "too-wit too-woo", to which "two-eight two-oh" is
| similar sounding.
| gertrunde wrote:
| A moderately tangential weird fact...
|
| "too-wit too-woo" sort of isn't the sound of an owl... it's the
| sound of two tawny owls, it's a female call (the 'too-wit' bit)
| followed by a male response! :)
|
| (Ref: https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-
| explorer/birds/birds... )
| globular-toast wrote:
| Ah... I didn't get it. I even put the number into Wolfram Alpha
| to see if it had a nice factorisation or something.
| carstenhag wrote:
| I'm glad that in Germany it's not as weird as in the UK then...
| we only sometimes have postal issues on newly zoned areas.
| Havoc wrote:
| Despite the oddities it is actually quite nice in practice.
|
| Almost all websites are hooked into this so filling out an
| address is usually just type in your postcode & select your
| flat number from the list.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| An article about strange house numbers in Britain that doesn't
| mention 221B? How many other _addresses_ have a _controversy_
| section in their Wikipedia entry.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/221B_Baker_Street
| doublesocket wrote:
| I did a bunch of analysis of UK addresses at a former job. My
| favourite was the clear inverse correlation between house number
| and value, with a noticeable dip for number 13s, which from
| memory were valued around 2.5% lower than where they should have
| been.
| f4c39012 wrote:
| Some UK streets don't have a #13, i believe because 13 is
| widely considered unlucky
| darkclouds wrote:
| [dead]
| justincormack wrote:
| Yes I lived in such a street, 1at number 11. 1960s street.
| neilo40 wrote:
| I live in an Edwardian street and my house should have been 13
| except it isn't. They skipped it and my house is 15 instead.
| Hopefully the universe doesn't spot this deceit!
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Perhaps the story is that there is some bias in the streets
| which have number 13s instead of skipping like on your street
| and that's the reason for the price difference?
| alexwasserman wrote:
| Now I'm curious about the ratio of houses numbered 13 and 12a
| (then 14 with no 13) across the UK.
| justincormack wrote:
| Our street just went from 11 to 15.
| ralferoo wrote:
| Generally, we have odd on one side and even on the other,
| so this isn't likely.
|
| The odds and evens are usually also allocated sequentially
| and independently, so it can be incredibly annoying when
| you're looking at the numbers on the wrong side of the road
| thinking you're getting close when you're actually walking
| away from the house because the numbers are much higher or
| lower on the other side.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I don't know how many streets named "Letsby Avenue" there are in
| the UK; but apparently there are at least three different police
| stations on such streets.
|
| NOTE: "Let's be having you" is a cliche Dixon-of-Dock-Green-style
| exhortation from a policeman to a villain, urging him to give
| himself up; c.f. "It's a fair cop, guv".
| comprev wrote:
| "Named in the late 1990s, Letsby Avenue is a quarter-mile
| stretch of road in Tinsley which is home to the South Yorkshire
| Police Operations Complex."
|
| https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/people/perfectly-named-addres...
| mrb wrote:
| The house numbered "9156" is most likely a data entry typo where
| two digits were swapped, and the correct number is "1956". That
| would make sense especially because the other house number are
| "below 2000" as the author claims.
|
| Edit: the alleged address is: 9156 Mill Ln, Ilketshall St Andrew,
| Beccles NR34 8JL, UK
|
| In the dataset of all UK property sales since 1995
| (http://prod.publicdata.landregistry.gov.uk.s3-website-eu-wes...)
| there are other houses on that street but their "street numbers"
| are names like "CHERRY TREES" or "BLACKSMITHS" and that one house
| is "9156". So I don't immediately see where the other houses
| numbered "below 2000" are. Maybe not on Mill Ln, but other
| streets? In any case, Google maps has two street numbers for the
| house: 9156 but also 56:
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/56+Mill+Ln,+Beccles+NR34+8...
| Rygian wrote:
| One "weird numbering scheme" according to the article is setting
| house numbers based on distance (in meters) from a predefined
| "street start" point.
|
| I find this arrangement to be the most convenient one, and I've
| found it quite often in villages in France.
|
| No need for "bis" or "3a" or "3 1/2" house numbers, and a
| consistent method to obtain the position of a house based on its
| house number.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Many addresses in slightly-more-rural Australia work like this.
| The road I grew up on was numbered by the 10s of metres from
| the main road. 192 was 1.92 KM from the main road.
| ColinWright wrote:
| I believe they do that in at least some areas of New Zealand.
| andylynch wrote:
| They do indeed - it's called RAPID (Rural Address Property
| IDtification) and is used in most rural areas. For instance a
| house 5.5 km down a road on the left will be 501. Makes it
| very easy to find places, all you need is a working odometer.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also avoids oddities when multiple buildings are build
| between existing ones at some later point. As there is
| usually plenty of space to add them.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In France, I believe that distance from town hall is used to
| pick which end of a street is to be no. 1. But then numbers
| incrementally follow from there.
|
| Distance is not used to rank each property.
| euroderf wrote:
| In rural Finland you'll often see 100 house numbers per
| kilometer. Alternating even & odd, you'd get a number every 20
| meters, which is more than sufficient. I'd think this is really
| handy for emergency services, when people don't bother to put
| up house numbers on dirt roads.
| pluies wrote:
| It is indeed used quite a lot in France, and it's great but...
| For extra confusion my parent's street starts with straight
| numbers (1, 2, 3...), _then_ switches to distance-based count!
| So that on one side of the road, we get houses 43, 45, 47, then
| suddenly 947, and on the other side 64, 66, 68... then 920.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This is increasingly how exits are numbered on highways in the
| USA Interstate system. So exit 52 is about 52 miles from the
| start of the highway or the state border. It works well because
| exits are rarely spaced close together. And if they do need to
| put exits close together, usually they letter suffixes like
| 52A.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Here in Vermont, we're half-assing that conversion: the
| canonical exit number is sequential, but below the sign at
| the exit you have something like "Milepoint Exit 38". It
| drives me nuts.
|
| Another truly perverse thing is that if you're on I-91, the
| exits for I-89 have numbers (10 A and B). On the other hand,
| if you're on I-89, there are no exit numbers for the I-91
| exits. What? How?!
| eep_social wrote:
| IIRC I89 exits are numbered starting from 1 at the border
| with NH which happens to be just east of that interchange.
| Maybe adding a number for I91 would have forced them to
| renumber every other exit across the state and someone
| decided (for better or worse) to skip that? It's not as if
| the I89 exit numbers would line up with the I91 ones
| anyway, that would be even less sensible.
| NeoTar wrote:
| Isn't this a standard in parts of North America too? Although
| probably using feet instead of metres.
| ralferoo wrote:
| From the small number of US cities I've been to, it seems to
| be 100 numbers per block and roughly divided up between
| whatever's there. Sometimes evenly spaced, sometimes starting
| from 1 at one end at 99 at the other and a free for all in
| the middle.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I think that this is usually implemented as a thousand
| numbers to the mile.
| bestouff wrote:
| Yes especially in rural areas, where houses are sparsely
| spaced. If 15 and 17 are 3km apart, you can have several
| hundreds houses appearing between these numbers, and no amount
| of "bis" and "ter" will save you.
| zubairq wrote:
| Another UK Postcode oddity is Gibraltar which has GX111AA as the
| postcode for the entire country
| donpott wrote:
| Gibraltar is not a country
| NeoTar wrote:
| A lot of the British Overseas territories have adopted similar
| postcodes (e.g. ASCN 1ZZ for Ascension Island)
|
| Although it's disputable whether they are a part of the UK, or
| separate administrations that have postcodes designed to look
| like a UK postcode!
| rsynnott wrote:
| A very extreme variant of this is Hong Kong, a country of over
| 7 million people, which the Chinese postal service allocates
| _one_ postcode to. (AIUI this postcode isn't widely used
| outside of China).
| f4c39012 wrote:
| Most of the time in HK the postcode of "0" or "00000" is used
| when a zip code is required
| krisoft wrote:
| I don't know if that is so odd to me. Gibraltar is 6.8 sq km.
| The post code where I have grown up in east-europe is roughly 7
| sq km. So to me that makes perfect sense as a post code.
|
| Is there a rule on how big a post code is supposed to be?
|
| (Now, my current postcode in the UK is just the single house.
| That for example feels way too small to me.)
| madeofpalk wrote:
| UK postcodes are usually _extremely_ specific. One postcode
| per road or even block is very normal.
| gkedzierski wrote:
| Even more so. Some buildings I lived in had several
| postcodes. (e.g. some apartments in the building had one
| postcode assigned, and others had a different one)
| NeoTar wrote:
| [According to Wikipedia] the aim is to have one post-code
| per fifteen addresses.
|
| Which means that unlike (5 digit) ZIP codes and German
| Postal codes, UK Postcodes are typically pretty useful for
| navigation - people will often enter a postcode into a Sat-
| Nav to reach a home or business. However, sometimes this
| can entirely fail - e.g. for a historic house on a large
| estate which may have access some hundreds of meters away
| from the postcode indicated location, and so sometimes
| you'll see a separate postcode to put into your Sat-Nav !
| switch007 wrote:
| > the entire country
|
| City/overseas territory*
| denton-scratch wrote:
| How are house numbers allocated on El Camino Real in California?
| (AKA El Camino BIGNUM) I believe they run to 5 digits; Does every
| house-number have a house?
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| Different municipalities have the same number and street.
|
| You can try it.
|
| 12345 El Camino Real
|
| Can be found in San Diego, Los Altos Hills, and Atascadero.
|
| Real means Royal not double.
| jameshart wrote:
| And can you address houses one block over by specifying El
| Camino Imaginary?
| globular-toast wrote:
| I'd like to know where the one near Beccles is. I used to live
| there and I'm quite surprised to hear of such an amusing hack
| nearby. Curious that the other high number one is also in
| Suffolk, only about 30km away.
|
| Now I'm wondering if it's possible to register an irrational
| number like Pi. I suppose "Pi" could be a house name but I would
| want it to be the number.
| blowski wrote:
| Yes, as a Suffolk resident I'm wondering if there's some
| special thing about high house numbers.
| julian_t wrote:
| Some people like having house names as well as a numbers. We
| live at no.69 and I once entertained the idea of calling it
| "No. 47", but the idea was quickly vetoed.
|
| (In case you're wondering "why 47?", for some reason our street
| doesn't have a no.47, so it would have been a fairly benign
| joke)
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| I grew up maybe 300m from the Minus One house mentioned in
| Clacton On Sea and did a paper in that area for a couple of
| years and never heard of it so I'm wondering how true some of
| these really are?
| jfk13 wrote:
| Well, you can read it ("MINUS ONE") on the front of the house
| if you zoom in on the StreetView photo. And the Royal Mail
| recognises it (try pasting "minus one, clacton" into
| https://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode).
|
| Though it may be a house name rather than a number.
| rwmj wrote:
| It's a string so you can probably register anything you like.
| In our village there are is a road with houses with numbers
| "<N> Cottages" and "<N>" (for various numbers <N>). I guess
| post is often misdirected.
| beej71 wrote:
| I don't know if they still do it, but a cousin of mine in England
| in the 80s lived in a house with no number. It was simply "The
| Woodlands" in that particular village.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I have a friend whose address is The Blue House.
| ralferoo wrote:
| Do you call him The Bear?
| justneedaname wrote:
| Yeah this is very common in the UK for a house to have a name
| rather than number, particularly in old villages.
| ekns wrote:
| When I was living in Edinburgh, I encountered the corner case of
| the upper levels of an apartment building having a _different
| postcode_ from the lower levels. Everything online used the same
| address database so I wondered why I could never find my address
| under my (presumed) postcode.
| stevekemp wrote:
| Edinburgh is awesome, in particular, for the way that flats can
| be numbered within buildings.
|
| I used to live in flat on the top floor which received mail as
| either "TFL" (for top-floor, flat on the left", or "Flat 6".
| Different companies used different formats for the address.
|
| I'd lived in GFL "ground-floor, flat left" and "GFR" for
| "Ground-floor, flat-right" as well. But never in a middle
| floor. I assume they would be MFL and MFR respectively. But who
| knows?
| orangewindies wrote:
| Flats on floors in between usually have the floor number as
| the first part: "3FL" for third floor on the left or "2F3"
| for second floor, third flat. Or at least that's how it was
| when I lived in Edinburgh in the 90s.
| zabzonk wrote:
| when i lived in edinburgh in the 70s, we would just stick a
| card on the flat door with the surnames of the inhabitants on
| it - the flats themselves did not have numbers.
| fellerts wrote:
| Norwegian apartments are all identified by a single letter
| and four numbers. For example, H0203 means 2nd floor, 3rd
| apartment from the left as seen when ascending the stairs.
| The H means "main floors" (as opposed to the loft or
| cellar). Very useful when visiting other apartments.
| NeoTar wrote:
| That is pretty much how it works in Germany - flats are
| identified by resident surname, and numbers, if they exist,
| are not known or little used.
| mcdee wrote:
| They use 1FL/1FR for first floor, 2FL/2FR for second floor,
| etc.
| secondcoming wrote:
| My flat in Edinburgh has two official post codes, depending on
| who is communicating with me.
| tanepiper wrote:
| When I worked at Scottish Gas, dealing with tenement flats in
| Edinburgh was always a nightmare because TGB (the old billing
| system) used the old 1F/2F/3F system but the electricity system
| used the numbered system - so customers would get mail for both
| but it would be mixed up all the time.
|
| If you have to deal with a pre-pay meter going in, or just a
| change in meter they usually screwed up the MPR number with the
| address and end up replacing the wrong one.
|
| And I lived in Edinburgh for 13 years, mostly in tenement flats
| - so it was always a hassle.
| jhonsrid wrote:
| I've seen this done (in England) for blocks of flats where each
| floor has it's own postcode that matches the floor, eg ZZ1 Z1A
| through to ZZ1 Z1G (A-G for floor 1 to 7).
| Minor49er wrote:
| This reminds me of the "What is the minimal possible UK address?"
| post from earlier this year
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34995370
| gambiting wrote:
| One other oddity is that there are "magic" postcodes in the UK
| that map to various government services, for instance:
|
| BX5 5BD
|
| Is a postcode to use when sending mail to HMRC(the UK tax
| office), but that address doesn't exist anywhere if you try
| searching for it. Royal Mail is the only company that can deliver
| post to that address too, they have the internal mapping to know
| where it needs to go - no other courier company will accept
| letters to that address. And, annoyingly - Royal Mail's own
| online postage store doesn't accept it as a valid address, you
| have to buy stamps and hand-write the address.
| jayflux wrote:
| I don't think that's true about only Royal Mail can post there.
| There's clear instructions on gov.uk for all couriers on where
| to send the mail if they come across this post code, it's not
| some weird secret.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-custo...
| gambiting wrote:
| Yes, but you can't use the BX5 5BD postcode if you do. They
| give you an alternative address for couriers.
| pdpi wrote:
| I've been in London for over ten years, and family back in
| Portugal still struggles with the idea that
| Flat <number> <Post code> UK
|
| is enough to uniquely identify my address.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I grew up in London, in a house that shared a postcode with
| only _one_ other house.
|
| A school friend didn't believe I would successfully receive
| mail addressed with only my forename and postcode.
|
| (Until he tried it and I brought the received letter to
| school.)
| syncsynchalt wrote:
| Sometimes you don't even need that:
| https://boingboing.net/2007/01/04/royal-mail-delivers.html
| notahacker wrote:
| there's an Irish blog dedicated to testing their post service
| like this https://www.meversusanpost.com
|
| My favourite is still the one addressed to "gobshites", which
| was delivered to their parliament as the sender intended
| [deleted]
| comprev wrote:
| Here in Ireland the "Eire Code" is even more accurate than a UK
| Post Code. Each building has a unique code.
|
| https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/consumer/phone-interne...
| Shrezzing wrote:
| I live at flat 8 of building 5, which through a strange quirk in
| the way addresses are created in my city & then recorded at the
| post office, accepts mail intended for both 8/5 and 5/8. A nearby
| neighbour in flat 5 of building 8 also receives mail intended for
| both 5/8 and 8/5. Most mail providers automatically adjust "flat
| 5 building 8, street name" to "5/8, street name", so we've got no
| way of fixing it.
|
| Everyone in the estate who lives in flat 9 or lower in their
| respective buildings has the same issue, and the issue also
| occurs in a bunch of other new builds in the city.
| rwmj wrote:
| I have a friend who lives in a house which was knocked through
| from two houses. She has two addresses, either work. She also
| has two gas meters, two electric meters and so on, although she
| got those disconnected (to save on standing charges).
| sega_sai wrote:
| Yes, I had the same issue previously. It was constant mixing
| between flat 1 building 2, vs flat 2 building 1 (2/1 vs 1/2). I
| think trying to be explicit 'Flat N, M X street' helps instead
| of using the A/B notation. (although now I leave in 7/7 so I
| don't care).
| owisd wrote:
| I lived in a flat where the convention was to write the flat
| number like 8/5 and would occasionally get mail to the
| equivalent of 08-May.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-10-09 23:01 UTC)