Renaming house

inkydolphin

I find it much easier to find my house if I have a number on it.

Ramouth

We changed the name of our last house before selling as we were not keen on it and had read that properties with “Cottage” in the name sell for more (cynical I know!)

We did it through the council who then informed all the other relevant people.  IIRC the form asked us to list three options in case our preferred name was already in use in the area.  The house also had a number but the name came up as well when using postcode searches.

martindow

theartfullodger said:

We bought a house in Maidenhead (two moves back).  We decided to name it "Seaview"  (obviously no sea view available) .  Neighbours decided we were even odder than they had thought.. 

Reminds me of David Sedaris, the author, who renamed his beach house the Sea Section.  I can thoroughly recommend his books of short stories.

lincroft1710

Many years ago there was a guy who would buy or build bungalows in the same village, then live in them for a short time before selling up and moving on to the next project. He named the first "Myhome" (redacted) and took the name with him every time he moved. 

badger09

Section62 said:

ThisIsWeird said:

If the number will remain your postal address, and will also be displayed, then fill your boots. (There may be pedantic reasons why some form of registering 'may' be required, but unless you actually intend to use it as your postal name, then the chances of it being an 'issue' for anyone is infinitesimal.)

Not "pedantic", it would be enforcing the law.

There are good reasons why naming and numbering is controlled.  One of the more obvious ones is so the emergency services can get to the right property as quickly as possible.  You can imagine the situation if the ambulance service were called to "Weird Towers" on "Any Street" and someone else had decided they liked the name "Weird Towers" and had unofficially put up a big sign on their front door saying "Weird Towers".  Although the use of GPS has reduced how much of a problem this is, there remains an issue that seeing an unofficial name on a door or gate could cause delays to the emergency services getting to the right property.

The same applies to things like deliveries (albeit without the urgency), so if there is duplication of names it is likely to be a lot more than an infinitesimal chance of it causing an issue.  And in rural areas where many roads have no signed name the issue is even more significant.

ThisIsWeird said:

A house we considered buying had only a name, and a hellish one at that, so we looked into changing it, which turned out to largely be a process that involved the PO. I don't recall other interested parties, but it makes sense that the council would also wish to know.

It wouldn't have been the PO.  The local authority (unitary or 2nd tier) is the street naming and numbering authority - they are the only organisation with the powers to decide/allocate names and numbers to streets and buildings.

Part of the street naming and numbering duty is to consult with other affected parties (e.g. emergency services, Royal Mail) and then to inform Ordnance Survey of the final details.  OS then add the information to the UPRN database.

Organisations such as the emergency services and Royal Mail (not the PO) will then pull the updated information from the UPRN database.

ThisIsWeird said:

And, since the house name was shown on maps, I guess Land Registry would also be involved? I don't know.

Ordnance Survey are responsible for producing 'official' mapping, not Land Registry.  LR produce plans based on the OS mapping.  AFAIK LR wouldn't necessarily update the registration until the next time a registration event happened (I assume they would just need evidence that 'New Name' is the same property as 'Old Name'), but any of their records based on the UPRN database should be updated automatically.  If anyone needs to know for sure then we know who to ask.

Some very interesting points there. 

We bought our previous home in 2000. It had a lovely unusual name, no number, no street name, just the name of the ‘village’ area. Shortly after moving in, we discovered that the person who sold the house to our vendors, had built a much bigger house about 1 mile away & given his new home exactly the same name. The new place also had no number or street name, just the area and to add to the confusion, the first part of his post code was the same as ours! 

I assume he didn’t bother seeking permission and it did cause occasional problems with mis delivered mail. When we sold in 2021 we left contact details of the current owners of the ‘other’ house in a folder we’d prepared for our buyers. 

ansaryon

badger09 said:

We bought our previous home in 2000. It had a lovely unusual name, no number, no street name, just the name of the ‘village’ area. Shortly after moving in, we discovered that the person who sold the house to our vendors, had built a much bigger house about 1 mile away & given his new home exactly the same name. The new place also had no number or street name, just the area and to add to the confusion, the first part of his post code was the same as ours! 

I assume he didn’t bother seeking permission and it did cause occasional problems with mis delivered mail. When we sold in 2021 we left contact details of the current owners of the ‘other’ house in a folder we’d prepared for our buyers. 

If it's not the name, it's the street.

There's only one other road in the whole of the UK with the same name as mine... and it's a mile away, so most of the postcode matches. To complicate things, both roads have a mixture of names and numbers (proper names, as in never had a number - all the houses around here used to have just names, but in the 70s the majority were given numbers instead. For whatever reason, my side of the road kept their names, while the other side lost theirs in favour of numbers only).

It used to be common, pre sat-nav, to answer the door and be asked "is this number 13?". Nope, it isn't, and never has been - I'd have a sign saying "13" outside if it was, rather than "My house name". I had a stack of printed maps I used to hand out, directing them to the right road a mile away in the neighbouring village. This has become much less common these days, although I do get the odd delivery driver moaning at me for not having a number! They use Google Maps, which, if you put in my house name and street - you guessed it, directs you to the other road. Google Maps hasn't got the hang of house names, you see.

Thankfully most places (Amazon, Tesco etc) all use Ordnance Survey data, which *does* have house names on it.

BungalowBel

I once knew a house called COBWEBS.  The owner said it stood for Currently Owned By Woolwich Equitable Building Society.

We gave our bungalow a name when we bought it.  It is displayed on the front, along with the number, but the number is the most prominent and we never use the name in  correspondence.  We  have never informed anyone officially.

MalMonroe

MultiFuelBurner said:

Apparently here are a few that were allowed

Wetwang House
Bushygap Cottage
Dicks Mount Cottage

Let alone the interesting street and village names out there.

Well there's a place called Wetwang near Driffield in Yorkshire, so that's not particularly unusual and as for the others, they're only mild double entendres. 

MalMonroe

martindow said:

theartfullodger said:

We bought a house in Maidenhead (two moves back).  We decided to name it "Seaview"  (obviously no sea view available) .  Neighbours decided we were even odder than they had thought.. 

Reminds me of David Sedaris, the author, who renamed his beach house the Sea Section.  I can thoroughly recommend his books of short stories.

David has lots of houses around the world, though, doesn't he? Sea Section is just one of them. Read his books, love him!!

GaleSF63

MultiFuelBurner said:

Apparently here are a few that were allowed

Wetwang House
Bushygap Cottage
Dicks Mount Cottage

Let alone the interesting street and village names out there.

Wetwang is the name of a village in East Yorkshire.