Thursday, 16 April 2015
House Numbering
....... house numbering in the metropolis was introduced in 1767, though it took several years to complete. New developments were the required to be numbered when they were built, while older areas were slowly renumbered over time.
(The Regency Redingote)
Probably seems odd to us to think of a world where you found houses simply by people's descriptions and directions to them but clearly until well into the 1800s this is what you did.
I decided to call my project Number Six knowing that 1820 marked a shift in all kinds of ways towards our modern world and industrial society - pretty much the last of rural England. Soon, improved roads and railways and rapidly growing cities would change the landscape forever.
Click on the link above if you want to find out a lot more about the Regency period.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Interesting article, Do you think that JK Rowlings read this before she named the Hogwarts platform 9 3/4? On a more serious note you mention that rural England began disappearing in the mid 1800's. I visited GB 3 times in the 1980's and still found "rural England" to be breathtaking!
ReplyDeleteQuite right Beth, English countryside is lovely and there is still more than you imagine there is when you live in the burbs of a city. What I really meant to say was the early 1800's saw the end of a life founded on agriculture and vast country estates and most of the population shifted into cities and the draw of industrialisation. It was a dramatic shift in all kinds of ways to how people lived. The States and Canada of course still have rural heartlands on a huge scale. Marilyn
Delete