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Roads, Courts and Terraces ?

Maris

Maris

master brummie
No doubt I'm being a bit thick here but I'm trying to get my head around the old addresses. I know that a court had houses around it so if an address was the back of such and such court would that be the house that would be accessed through the court, the house at the front being on the Road ? And what does an address such as xx Terrace mean ? A row of terraced houses off a road ?

Puzzled of Brum.
 
Addresses in the censuses are often given as something like court 5 house 2, in these cases the number of the houses at the front aren't given. I am more familiar with addresses like 2 back of 26 Guildford Street. In cases like that 26 was the house on the street on one side of the entry. Generally the lower number is given; in my example the house on the other side of the entry was number 28. The houses in the court were given their own numbers from 1 to whatever. In my example there were 14 houses in the court an so were 1 back of 26 to 14 back of 26. The court behind 26 was court 4 so the alternative addresses were 4 court house 1 to 4 court house 14. Hope that makes sense
 
Sue, I had a similar problem some years ago in Cheltenham, and the library gave me a copy of a page from an annuaire (the book the post office used for delivering mail - so they had the right person). For instance 2, Alfred Place (or terrace) would be No 2 of a particular row of houses, rather than give it an address along a street. In Glascote village there are still houses with the original names outside - just past the Co-op there is Orchard Place - (I think it's a row of 6 but it might just be four). Those would have been numbered 1-? however many there were. In this instance the name is above the entry, but some of them have a lozenge hier on one of the houses with the name on. As these houses are quite late (ie, after 1850), I would suspect they were addressed as
? Orchard Place, Main Road, Glascote. (The road name has changed now, now it's just one rather than two names for that stretch of road).
 
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