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Monday 3 August 2015

House numbering

Houses were first numbered in the Pont Notre-Dame in Paris in 1463.

In the 18th century the first street numbering schemes were applied across Europe, to aid in administrative tasks and the provision of services such as the post.

The first numbering in Britain appeared in 1708, where the system was first used on a street in London's Whitechapel area. After 50,000 Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in France arrived in London, they struggled to find their way around the capital’s often unnamed streets. So they put numbers on their homes to make it easier to locate one another.

The houses in the Jewish quarter in the city of Prague in the Austrian Empire were numbered in 1727  to aid the authorities in the conscription of the Jews.

The spreading of house numbers throughout Europe started in the middle of the eighteenth century beginning with Madrid in 1750 (or 1751) where a block system was used. Soon street numbering on a large scale was being applied in  London, Paris and Vienna, as well as many other cities across Europe.

The Duke of Wellington's London home at Aspley House had the address Number One, London, as it was the first house one came across after tollgates at the top of Knightsbridge.

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