I have a question about Harry Potter/England

[conuly]

In book 5, it says that Sirius' house (number 12) is in between numbers 11 and 13. Is this normal for England? In the US, streets are all even on one side, and all odd on the other, so number 12 would be in between 10 and 14, not 11 and 13.

Comments

Re: Sometimes I use my useless trivia knowledge for good!

[missfahrenheit.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I have explored a fair amount of Kent and the Medway towns (and SW London, now- I get lost a lot) and I have never seen a street that doesn't have odd numbers on one side and even on the other, and would probably have been surprised to see anything different. I mean, I know there are some places where houses are numbered like that, but I don't think I've actually seen any myself. It tends to happen more when there are only houses on one side of the road, or something like that.

Grimmauld Place always put me in mind of a sort of square (is that canon or me jumping to conclusions?), and I assumed the houses would have been numbered in a clockwise pattern and no 12 just... wouldn't have been there most of the time. Of course, the magical argument above is excellent :)