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KwanEsq
gertrunde
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... )
thebruce87m
The insurance company Guardian Direct had a phone number along these lines. Good marketing since I still remember it to this day: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/the-owl-s-number...
teleforce
Thanks for this info, now I know why in English "to woo" means "to entice".
[1] woo entry, Cambridge Dictionary:
globular-toast
Ah... I didn't get it. I even put the number into Wolfram Alpha to see if it had a nice factorisation or something.
denton-scratch
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
"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...
jen729w
A very popular joke in kids' joke books in the 80s.
Q: Where does a policeman live?
A: 999 Letsby Avenue.
999, of course, being the UK's emergency number.
walthamstow
"Let's be 'avin you" is much better known as a football rallying cry, isn't it? I'd never heard of it as a police thing.
The most famous example of the phrase I'm aware of is when Delia Smith, a septuagenarian TV cook, exhalted her home Norwich City fans with a drunken slurred voice at half time over the PA system.
walthamstow
Not sure why I've been downvoted! Here's the video. Every football fan in England will connect the phrase with this event. It's not a bad thing, she's a national treasure.
jimnotgym
I think you are downvoted for not quite being correct. I think "Let's be 'avin you" is by far better known as a police thing.
This is what made the spectacle of a drunken Delia shouting it at a crowd all the more absurd.
fennecfoxy
You've been nicked!
michaelt
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
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
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
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
>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
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!
nradov
I think you're mixing up separate concepts. The USPS has a fully normalized format for all deliverable addresses. Anything above that is purely for the convenience of the recipient.
32 VASSAR ST
CAMBRIDGE MA 02139-4309
lolinder
Yeah, this confused me, too. Do they not put names on envelopes in England?
kwhitefoot
The recipient might need the name if more than one person is resident. But the post delivers mail to addresses not people. I did once encounter the postman as he was walking from the road to my front door. I asked him to give me the post as I was on my way out but he insisted that it had to be delivered to the house not to me.
jcarty-pinner
I don't think we have to. Mail can be sent with just a postcode and door number, or just a postcode of the place is v something big.
Doctor_Fegg
One of the depressing things about UK addresses is that this list isn't open data.
robertlagrant
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...
mnahkies
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
mtmail
And some of the usable (still not open) files exclude Northern Ireland so it's GB not UK data really.
undefined
Doctor_Fegg
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.
marssaxman
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.
bloak
443 Manchester Road. See https://paulplowman.com/stuff/house-address-twins-proximity/
Doctor_Fegg
That’s it - thank you!
cwmma
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.
madcaptenor
Related but not exactly the same - there are a few streets that have duplicate numbers close to each other because they run from a point in Cambridge to one in Somerville, and both cities number up from 1 at their end of the street. I can’t find an example though…
ProllyInfamous
I just moved away from a similar situation in SE Tennessee: multiple properties share "the same address" along the same road because this state highway passes through a city, then county, then a different city.
My former property (a duplex) had the same repeat addresses as a financial advisor, health spa, and post office. Many people showed up over the years, looking for such services from a decrepit 100 year old cabin located miles away from their intended destination.
--
When I attempted to resolve this numbering issue, the postmaster made it very clear that people would fight this (and did). After eight years, I recently moved away [and nothing has been resolved].
themoonisachees
I once had to meet in person in with someone and they chose a town in France near our common objective. The town happened to be sitting across a departement line and had two town halls, each of which oversaw half of the town. Guess where we were supposed to meet in a time before cell phones.
sdflhasjd
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
>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 :-)
undefined
TazeTSchnitzel
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.
garblegarble
I started writing a reply saying I couldn't imagine such a place (and that I assumed it was about dodging the Post Office's license fee), but it looks like you're right - in researching the reply I found an article[1] from back in 2006 stating that at that time in England only 60% of buildings had entries in the postcode file!
They cite the example of churches that don't receive post, I guess if somebody had a TV there & used it to watch live broadcast TV then the building would need a TV license. I do wonder when the TV Licensing door knockers would show up trying to gain entry... during a church service seems a little inappropriate!
1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/jul/13/epublic.g...
f4c39012
In a word, licensing.
sandworm101
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.
eruci
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.
SeanLuke
> 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.
madcaptenor
This one is confusing because it’s on the odd side of the street - 00 is clearly acting as minus 1.
SeanLuke
No, the house on to the left is 1 East Clay street, and the house on the right is 1 West Clay Street. Directly across from 00 Clay Street is a street. On either side of that street are 2 East and 2 West respectively. 00 is the only house not on East nor West Clay Street, but just Clay Street. It's at the origin.
madcaptenor
This is a better explanation of it. Thanks!
AJRF
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
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)
simonjgreen
This reminds me of one of my favourite articles. Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses. https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...
Rygian
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 ½" house numbers, and a consistent method to obtain the position of a house based on its house number.
nerdponx
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
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
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.
madeofpalk
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.
pluies
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.
euroderf
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.
bombcar
In some rural parts of the US the only numbers you’ll see are little red signs for emergency crews.
bestouff
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.
NeoTar
Isn’t this a standard in parts of North America too? Although probably using feet instead of metres.
ralferoo
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
I think that this is usually implemented as a thousand numbers to the mile.
mytailorisrich
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.
Rygian
> Distance is not used to rank each property.
Here's a counter-example: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/43.5909519,7.1060244/43.5939...
tnjm
In built-up areas, the numbering is typically sequential. In rural areas, houses are numbered based on distance from the start of the road.
Our road in the _campagne_ has two houses: number 50 (50m from the start of the road) and number 70 (at 70m).
ColinWright
I believe they do that in at least some areas of New Zealand.
andylynch
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
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.
mrb
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...
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>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.