Addresses and Google Maps

[dl8860]

We moved house recently and plenty of delivery drivers/sky engineer etc have struggled to find us.

The house is a name rather than a number, but at the same time it's hardly the middle of nowhere. Just outside a town, and only just set back from a main road. The postcode points you to a location about 3 doors down.

If you search for the full address in google maps, it doesn't find it. Next door's address is very similar (just one word different), and yet theirs does come up.

What do delivery drivers use to find a non numbered property if it isn't listed in gmaps?

If you have a non numbered address, does yours come up? There doesn't seem to be a clear way to get it added to gmaps. Is it possible? And is there any downside?

 

[dl8860]

This was the bane of my life when I used to be 'on the road'. Don't all houses actually have numbers but some people just choose not to use them?

/edit - I do remember struggling to find someone, calling them to ask and they told me they were the house next to 'number xxx'. Surely that means they were number xxx+1 (or +2, depending on odd/even numbers) but were just being Mrs Bucket by naming their house rather than admitting it actually had a number?

This is the strangest thing I've ever read, surely if you used to be 'on the road', you must know that it doesn't make sense for some houses to have numbers. For instance, the road that my house is on doesn't have a street name. So how can you have a number to your house without a street name? Have you ever seen an address have a road number rather than name?

So no, it's definitely not the case of some people thinking they are somehow better or something by hiding their house number. So bizarre!

 

[dl8860]

I think the idea of a road without a name is very strange. I'm trying to think of any streets or roads I ever went to which weren't named and I can't think of a single instance.

The house I'm sat in right now, my parents house, and my in-laws house (so the first 3 I could even think of) are all on roads that don't have names. Just road numbers.

Maybe it's a regional thing?

 

[dl8860]

A road without a name with houses without numbers?

Do you live on the beach?

What on earth is going on.

My address is
"House name
Village name
City
Postcode"

The road I live on has a number but certainly no name.

Can you link to one, I'm finding it hard to understand what you're on about.
I've just asked a neighbour who is a Postie if he's ever come across an address where there is no name for the street/road and he looked at me funny.

The whole point is I can't link to one. You could try and tell me what street name there is for buckingham palace if you like. Because it doesn't have one. Or Blenheim Palace.

I'm not pretending I live in a stately home, these are just examples that people know exist, where there's no street name, because they aren't on a street.

You could try and look at the A44, between Bromyard and Worcester. If you live on that road, your address doesn't have 'A44' in it. Someone else chime in, please.

 

[dl8860]

Some private roads don't have names. There is a road over the canal opposite us and it is completely private (owned by British Waterways). It has no name and the police have failed several times to enforce parking restrictions on it. There are no individual houses on it, just two gated developments with their own postcodes.

It's not just private roads and weird instances... it's a hugely common thing. At least in the parts of the world where I grew up and now live.

I guess if you only spend your time in cities in might seem strange. I imagine addresses without numbers and street names existed well before those with them first appeared.

 

[dl8860]

what3words is a private company that provides deliberately obscured location information.

yes. what3words use should be discouraged.

quite a few houses I lived in have no number just a house name and a village name. Never really thought about it, packages get delivered fine...

What do you mean by obscured? What is the reasoning for saying it should be discouraged?

You don’t think that it’s bizarre to ask for something to be delivered to a house with no number, on a street with no name?

Seeing as I've spent most of my life living in a house without a number that isn't on a street... no I don't find it bizarre at all. What's bizarre is a majority of people in this thread seem to think it's impossible for properties like this to exist when in fact the number of them is basically countless.

 

[dl8860]

In this day and age, when a website asks for your post code, which gives them your street/road and a list of numbers, from which you nominate 99, they’ll know your whereabouts, or in your case giving them AB12 3CD might take them straight to your door, but I was talking about 1979-80, when SatNavs/GPS and iPhones were a thing of the future.
From how you describe your house, unless I’m missing the glaringly obvious, if you’d ordered e.g. a vacuum cleaner from a company where I was employed as a driver in 1979, the warehouse would have given me the box and told me to deliver it, I’d ask “To where?” and they’d have just shrugged.
I may have asked, “What street, and what number?” they’d have said, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
That to me would have been bizarre, even more bizarre would have been you wondering why it never arrived.

.

So how did people at these addresses ever get things delivered before satnav and GPS? It can't be a bizarre proposition, if it's something that has been happening for hundreds of years already.

 

[dl8860]

You probably think that I’m being deliberately obtuse or just dumb, but I’ve no idea how I’d find a house with no number, on a street with no name before SatNavs were invented.
Your location is given as Worcester, so perhaps you say to delivery companies, “it’s a couple of miles from Kidderminster, near Hoobrook, just off the A422, opposite a duck pond, next to the Red Lion pub”
Were I the CEO of the company supplying you, I’d be inclined to say that I can’t afford to have a truck running around the boonies looking for a duck pond, when it could have completed ten deliveries to normal addresses in that time, how about you come and collect it at a discount?

I don't think that, it is a bit of a head scratcher really. I think the answer is as someone said above, deliveries used to be handled almost solely by the local postman, who just knew the area. And for directing friends or other guests to your house, you'd give them worded directions rather than just an address.