Here's a thread from the archives. It's on some of the quirks and peculiarities of Edinburgh street names, particularly where the "road" gets one name and the buildings get another address. threadreaderapp.com/thread/9608220…
I was reminded of this when browsing through an old copy of the Book of the @OldEdinClub (volume 27, 1949 to be precise) that has an interesting article on the history of street numbering in Edinburgh
@OldEdinClub So, up until the late 18th century, there weren't any street numbers in Edinburgh at all. People found their way around by reference to landmarks and other streets, e.g. "opposite the back stairs, Cowgate" or "head of Riddle's close, Lawnmarket". If you got lost, you'd just ask
@OldEdinClub This meant that the early Post Office directories, e.g. by Williamson, didn't contain numbers. These only listed important people with professions or trades anyway, so it wasn't necessarily too much of a problem. Nobody got lost. 
@OldEdinClub "Indian Peter" Williamson was an interesting fellow, he originated the "penny post" system for Edinburgh, so it stands to reason that he also organised the directory listings. Good money to be made off that.
@OldEdinClub Peter was native to Aberdeenshire but had been forcibly taken (kidnapped, by his own account) to north America against his will as a child. He was sold into service, but was treated kindly by his master and earned freedom and inheritance when the latter died
@OldEdinClub Anyway, Williamson ended up being captured and spending time with natives before escaping. On his return to Scotland he wrote an account of his adventures that made him financially independent. He took on the guise of "Indian Peter" to ingratiate himself in polite society
@OldEdinClub Using his finances, he set up a coffee house and printing shop. He then used this to print his director of Edinburgh, listing all the worthies by rank, profession or trade, and organising them and their addresses systematically. But even his own address was given rather vaguely
@OldEdinClub With his directory he had given Edinburgh its first list of anyone who was anyone and where they lived. So it stood to reason that he should take up the rights (and profits) for the Penny Post so that people could make use of the information he provided to send eachother letters
@OldEdinClub set up a network of 17 shops that would accept mail and employed 4 postal carriers to move it between them and deliver it. Williamson placed notices in his directory advertising this all. To make his business seem bigger, he numbered their service caps 1, 4, 8 and 16.
@OldEdinClub Williamson thereby established the first regular public postal service in Scotland, and he ran it as a local monopoly for 30 years until it was bought out for £25 by the GPO in 1793. That's 18th century nationalisation in action!
@OldEdinClub Williamson thus published his last PO directory in 1790, to run until 1792, you can see it here; digital.nls.uk/directories/br…. It was printed by a subcontractor, but sold at Williamson's "General Penny Post Office" at the Luckenbooth
@OldEdinClub By this time, we see street numbers beginning to appear for the New Town, but as volumes of mail and those wishing to send and receive it increased exponentially, finding the correct address became an ever increasing problem. Particularly when so many people shared surnames
@OldEdinClub Here we see some 1790s street numbering for the New Town Morrisons.
@OldEdinClub So street numbering was the way forward and the system began to be applied throughout the town. Only, there was one slight problem. Nobody mandated how it should be carried out.
@OldEdinClub So on Nicholson Street, they started at No. 1 on the northeast most property and numbered consecutively all the way to where it became Clerk Street, then crossed the road and went back the way on the west side
@OldEdinClub George Street was numbered consecutively on each side, both sides starting at 1, so you had to specify the north or south side of the street in addresses
@OldEdinClub Streets with only one side (e.g. Princes Street) were easier to do, you just started at one end and worked along. But of course at this time, Princes Street had a block of business and housing on its south side where the NB/Balmoral Hotel was later built
@OldEdinClub So for a while, Princes Street also had 1-5 South Side as well as 1-5 on the north side.
@OldEdinClub There are fundamental problems with these systems. Firstly, how do you account for streets that are growing longer? Then of course there's the problem of finding an unknown address when the numbers on each side of the street have little relation to eachother.
@OldEdinClub And of course, the north/south system with duplicated numbers was just a bit silly, wasn't it?
@OldEdinClub There was the additional problem, particularly with Princes Street, where the original townhouses had been subdivided into multiple premises, all still with same number. So a new, universal system had to be developed. And in 1811 the Corporation took it upon itself to set it up.
@OldEdinClub The new system divided the city rouughly into quadrants based on the intersection of the High Street and the Bridges
@OldEdinClub In each quadrant, the numbers would ascend in a manner moving away from the centre. So in the northwest, they got higher moving west and moving north. The numbers alternated on each side of the street, odds and evens on each side, in the manner with which we are familiar today
@OldEdinClub Many buildings were renumbered as a result, and some (e.g. Abercromby Place) had the ordering of the number switched to match the new rules. Exceptions were made for the Lawnmarket / High Street / Canongate, which, being the central axis, didn't quite fit the system
@OldEdinClub Generally, when walking "up" the direction of the arrow on the numbering system diagram, odds should be on your right and evens should be on your left. Although there are exceptions, e.g. Great King Street, where the evens are on your right
@OldEdinClub There are other quirks too. Princes Street jumps from 1 - 10. That's because 2 - 9 were the premises cleared away to build the NB / Balmoral Hotel, but the street was numbered in 1811 as if it had only 1 side.
@OldEdinClub This also dispels the conspiracy theory that Thistle Street is the inferior of Rose Street as the result of a unionist plot. Until re-numbering, Rose St. was 3 streets, East, Mid and West, each with its own numbering system. Young, Hill and Thistle are their northern equivalents
@OldEdinClub It's at this time that Charlotte, St. David and St. Andrew Street were split into north and south sections, which made the numbering relative to the squares they run off of more rational
@OldEdinClub The new system did create problems of its own, like on Great Stuart Street, where Ainslie Place gets in the way of the numbering system so walking along the street, we have to pass 1-15 Ainslie Place to get from 5 to 7 Great Stuart Street
@OldEdinClub These changes are an important consideration if you're looking at a New Town address prior to 1811, as there's the very strong probability that it points to a different building these days.
@OldEdinClub Edinburgh has a number of other quirks. The main one the thread at the start of this thread covers, where streets have different names on either side, or the road has one name but the buildings have their own street addresses. Leith Walk and London Road are prime examples.
@OldEdinClub Another is where you have "double decker" streets. On Leith Street. Thus the southwest side was numbered as "Leith Street Terrace" at the upper level in a consecutive series flickr.com/photos/4110599…
@OldEdinClub But for some reason, perhaps again because it was the axis of the quadrants, South Bridge was never renumbered, and uniquely retains its pre-1811 numbering scheme starting at the northeast corner and working to the end then back up the other side
@OldEdinClub So there you have it. The curious tale of how a kidnapped boy from Aberdeenshire came to set up Edinburgh's first street directory and postal service and led to the introduction of a rational street numbering system to the city threadreaderapp.com/thread/1200028…
