Finding Places in the UK

If you do not have a  Post Code (Zip Code) and the street is outside London go to the Royal Mail website http://www.royalmail.com/paf/ and click on Post Code finder. It is not necessary to known the house/premises number you can just put the street name and the town. If the post code finder is in any doubt of your requirements it will ask for clarification. For example: typing in the road name of "High Street" and the town of "Sutton" the post code finder will return about 4 or 5 Sutton High Streets together with the respective counties. Click on the correct one and you will see a display of the premises grouped by post codes. If you cannot see the premises named, or the house number, that you require then choose a postcode in the middle of the street. Click on to either of the Modern Map links on the links page. I prefer the UK Streetmaps site http://www.streetmap.co.uk/ Click the radio button for Post Codes and enter the post code. Finally Click on the search button. The relevant map should come up. It is possible to zoom in or out using the + and - zoom controls. The find by place is useful. Try clicking on the UK Place radio button and entering the name of a town or place name such as "Hampton Court". Again if there are alternatives you will be presented with these. Click on the one required and the map will come up with the chosen premises in view. Search on London Streets is the only one in which you can put in the street name. It covers Greater London which is generally everything within the M25 ring road or within a radius of 25 miles (40 kM) from the centre of London. Searching by phone codes is a bit hit and miss. Numbers outside of London seem to be OK but London numbers, such as 0208, bring up a small map of the centre of London. If the place you are looking for, such as Doddenham Hall, Doddenham, Worcestershire, does not show up in the search above try using Old Maps as directed below.

Old Maps
If the address is for example from the 1881 census and the road still exists then you have no problems. If the road or place no longer exists then go to a site like OS Old Maps http://www.old-maps.co.uk/  For this you will need to know the county and the town. In the opening screen of Old Maps click on the initial letter of the county then the county name. Scroll down and click on to the town name. From here on it is a matter of squinting at the screen. Generally only the major roads are named. If the town is large you may be squinting for a long time.

Finding People in the UK
When I first started this website it was fairly easy to find free websites to track down people. Time moves on, people no longer do anything really useful for free. So to find people in the UK use a UK specific search engine like www.google.co.uk or www.dogpile.co.uk. Searches will rarely bring the individuals details directly to your screen but it will take you to websites that may be able to find them. For other geographic specific search engines try changing the ".com" to the the country of your choice, for example www.google.de is the German google and www.google.be is the Belgian google. Failing that go to http:/www.beaucoup.com and choose a geographic search engine from the country of your choice.

Silver Surfers Net A collection of links to help find that certain someone
Zoom Info When an address such as Queen Elizabeth II Court is listed as Elizabeth II Court I wonder about the accuracy of the information