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Post by Karen on Nov 27, 2012 15:58:54 GMT
England is a small country, at least compared to the US. So I'm curious why some addresses have what I think of as an extra line. In the US, a standard address is: 123 Smith St. Town, State Zip code In the UK I see many (although not all) addresses as: 123 Smith St. Extra place that I don't understand (local region?) Town County Post code Please enlighten me.  |
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Post by Miisa on Nov 27, 2012 16:10:38 GMT
I looked through my UK addresses and the only one like that was an Irish address for my sister, which has no numbers in it at all:
name
town name
name of island, larger island group name
county
EIRE
But maybe the others are, as you say, a local region, part of a larger town, or maybe the name of the county.
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Post by tangent on Nov 27, 2012 18:59:44 GMT
British addresses are hierarchical and the format was chosen long before postcodes. Many English towns have suburbs which were once towns or villages in their own right but which have become part of the larger conurbation as housing spread. (Unlike the US we cannot simply spread into the countryside.). A town such as Stockport contains several districts which were once independent villages, Cheadle, Edgeley, Davenport, Shaw Heath, Heaviley, Adswood, Offerton, Marple and others. These villages often had similar street names. For example, Greater Manchester and the surrounding area has 63 Church Streets, and so an address often has to specify the district to ensure the mail arrives at the right address. The Post Office decided, therefore, that all addresses in outlying districts or former villages should specify the village even if there was no duplicate street name in another part of the town. So, an address in Stockport might be, 1 Church Street, Cheadle, Stockport, Cheshire <postcode> If a former village is not specified, the centre of town is assumed. Counties are included for the same reason that you use state names. Before the advent of postcodes, not every postal worker in every sorting office knew the locations of every town in Great Britain. Now that we use postcodes, the county is often omitted. |
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Post by Karen on Nov 27, 2012 19:16:32 GMT
Thank you. That makes a lot of sense. I understood the reason for the county names, but not the districts.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2012 19:46:16 GMT
I find that interesting as well. In Germany, you usually just have the street and the zip-code and the name of the city or village. A typical address might be:
Name of the person
Meierstr. 111
zip-code Hamburg
and maybe the country.
We could add the state, but in my case, the state is the same as the city since I live in one of the three city-states.
German addresses are boring. my most exciting one had my appartment number added to it.
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Post by Moose on Nov 27, 2012 19:51:40 GMT
I live on a housing estate and the name of the estate comes between the name of my street and the name of the town. But stuff would be delivered here without it still
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Post by Alvamiga on Nov 27, 2012 20:18:57 GMT
It still never stopped them delivering stuff to the Crescent Road where I used to live. One came back three times, in spite of me writing something on the front each time. The last time I wrote "third time lucky"  |
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Post by tangent on Nov 27, 2012 20:34:25 GMT
Some useless trivia:
Mail addressed to the village of Melbourne near Derby sometimes finds its way to Australia.
Mail addressed to Sutton near Macclesfield sometimes goes all over the country if Macclesfield is not specified because there are 20 Suttons in England.
Stoke-on-Trent used to be six individual towns called Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton which merged into one town in 1910. Arnold Bennett wrote a famous book about five of the towns, "Anna of the Five Towns", forgetting about Fenton which is now referred to as the 'forgotten town'.
A street may contain a collection of individual houses that is identified as a mews or a court. So an address might be,
16 MacNair Court
Church Lane,
Marple
Stockport
Cheshire
(Marple is one of Stockport's former villages.)
The address may include both the name of the mews or court and the adjoining street, depending on the whim of the inhabitants or perhaps the local council.
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Post by Moose on Nov 27, 2012 20:35:54 GMT
technically you only really need to put a number and a postcode for something to reach someone
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Post by Miisa on Nov 27, 2012 20:52:47 GMT
My father once got a letter for him that had
his name [misspelled]
Åland [an archipelago between Sweden and Finland where he lives, together with 30,000 other people]
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2012 21:13:18 GMT
Odd postal fact. Letters written by Meese to Svens in Mauritania will sometimes, eventually, make to Svens in Maryland!
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Post by tangent on Nov 27, 2012 21:19:29 GMT
Likewise, a friend of mine received a letter addressed to:
his name
Stoke-on-Trent
(a town of 250,000 people)
The clue was in the country of origin, somewhere in the far east, at a time when many oriental people in Stoke-on-Trent lived in large hostel.
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Post by Fr. Gruesome on Nov 27, 2012 22:33:16 GMT
There are no street names in Bagdad. Difficult for the postie ...
... similarly villages in Afghanistan are known by the name of the village headman: in Pakistan villages are known by their (British era) admin identity code.
I think the European system of putting the streetname before the number is quite sensible on the grounds that you have to find the street before you can find No. 68.
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Post by Moose on Nov 28, 2012 0:01:29 GMT
I only sent it to Mauritania for a bit of sun! Sheesh!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2012 0:04:23 GMT
Your plan worked, it stayed the winter. First time I ever got a Christmas card in April  |
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Post by Moose on Nov 28, 2012 0:12:05 GMT
Well you should have considered it early for next year  |
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Post by Shake on Nov 28, 2012 2:04:01 GMT
We received some mail once from someone who knew the town we lived in and the street:
<our last name>
West Main Street
<our town and state>
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Post by Moose on Nov 28, 2012 2:04:48 GMT
Your last name is fairly unusual I would think
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Post by Alvamiga on Nov 28, 2012 8:20:50 GMT
Mr Fairly-Unusual? That would be great for annoying people! |
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Post by ceptimus on Nov 30, 2012 11:04:24 GMT
Like Moose said, in the UK you only really need the house number and the postcode - all the rest is mostly ignored these days and is there for historical and traditional reasons. (Of course, it's also useful if the Postcode is accidentally wrong or illegible for some reason).
A UK postal address can be as short as: 5, RG4 7AB where 5 is the house number and the postcode 'RG4 7AB' identifies a street or part of a street - in this example it would be in or near the town of Reading.
The postcode system was very cleverly worked out - a postcode identifies a place in the UK that usually contains less than 100 separate addresses in just 6 or so characters, and the system had to be capable of adding or changing codes as new houses were built. And the letters and numbers were carefully chosen so that, usually, someone from nearby can guess that, say 'RG' means the town Reading and that an address with an RG4 code will be fairly close to one with an RG5 code and so on.
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Post by Alvamiga on Nov 30, 2012 19:58:04 GMT
They are very close to my RG1 code. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2012 20:08:03 GMT
Technically, all you need to put as an address for something mailed inside the US is the zip+4. That narrows it down to the individual address. I've never seen anyone try it, though.
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Post by Alvamiga on Nov 30, 2012 20:15:49 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2012 20:53:57 GMT
We were both laughing about that one!
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Post by Moose on Dec 1, 2012 4:10:34 GMT
Sven I don't get what you mean by the zip 'plus four'?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 1, 2012 14:07:58 GMT
In the US, we call our postal code 'zip codes', it's the 5 numbers that follow the state in an address. A few years ago they came up with zip plus 4, which was formatted 12345-1234. The extra four numbers supposedly give every address in the country a unique postal code.
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Post by Miisa on Dec 1, 2012 14:57:56 GMT
Essentially a social security number for a house?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 1, 2012 15:06:00 GMT
Existentially.
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Post by tangent on Dec 1, 2012 15:26:48 GMT
Very socialist.
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Post by Miisa on Dec 1, 2012 15:47:22 GMT
Not at all, just practical. Think of it as a phone number instead, if you like.
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