| Addresses on St.Helena |
St.Helena suffers from a lack of discipline in the addressing of its properties.
In Jamestown and parts of Half Tree Hollow (as well in a few other isolated areas), properties are designated in traditional ways, with house/flat numbers and street or road names, such as
42 Acacia Avenue
But this is fairly rare.
Some people have tried to solve this themselves by "naming" their home, but in most cases, the only safe way to locate a property uniquely is to quote the plot or parcel number as maintained by the Legal, Lands and Planning Department in the Lands Registry. Unfortunately, few people even know the number of the plot on which their house stands.
This means that the majority of properties on St.Helena are identified simply by the name of the person who lives in the property and the general area where the property is situated, such as...
Mr and Mrs A.N.Other, Sandy Bay
Of course, there are several complications with even this simple system:
- Quite often, more than one person with the same name can live in a given area, particularly as families still tend to stick with their place of birth
- Some people are fortunate to own more than one property, sometimes in the same area.
- When properties change hands, the address of the property effectively changes too
- If properties are rented, they can sometimes be identified by the owner and sometimes by the tenant (whose name can also change, of course)
- Many people on St.Helena have nicknames, and are habitually referred to by them. It is not uncommon for a person's real name to begin to fall into disuse!
Add to this confusion, the fact that district boundaries for different purposes do not coincide. Districts, as defined by the Lands Registry, are different to the electoral boundaries, etc.
For these reasons, while we will give the commonly used address (albeit without the owner's name), The Property Shop will always use Land Registry parcel numbers as a unique reference for the geographical location. The Reference used in these webpages is our own system which will always be unique, and will, for instance, also distinguish flats/apartments in a building.