Very soon after we moved north we got a moving-in card in the mail. It was thusly addressed;

Mr and Mrs Scotroutes(well, our real name)
The new houses
Aviemore.

Our house isn’t even that new!

My mates sister got one addressed to

Annie Upton
Nr Wantage

My dad sent me a postcard from Japan in the very early eighties – home address except he didn’t bother putting “Ireland” on it. It got to me. 😀

A long time back, my Dad got a letter from a college friend addressed to ‘Little Geoff, Ambleside’. It got to Ambleside post office and the postmaster/mistress had written next to the address “try Geoff < surname >“.

Right first time.

I got a postcard from a mate on holiday, addressed to:

[My full name]
His Dad’s a Postman
Accrington
UK

Didn’t Live & Kicking do a similar competition a few years ago to see who could get the least well addressed item posted to them

Postcard from a mate in the early 90’s

IIRC it went

Mike
The flat above the shop next to Currys
[home town]
Sussex

My son posted one with just ‘Santa Claus’ on the front & he got a reply.

To be fair, with the volume of letters they get, I’m pretty sure Royal Mail would know where Father Christmas lived.

A bunch of mates and I were on holiday and sent a card (actually a beermat with a stamp on it) that said ‘(mates name) can’t remember the address, but it’s the house opposite the bookies, with a polished brass letterbox, there might be a blue mini outside, (village name,) durham’ it got there too, no surprise really, it’s just a little pit village and the postmaster knew everyone!

Live and kicking a few years ago…

Are you Rip Van Winkle?

Cuprinol, sponsors of Shed of the Year posted a tin of wood preserver to

Pool Hoose
…… House
Kirkcaldy

No Postcode.

It was a courier company who delivered it, I should try using that format more often as couriers can seldom find us.

Our address is just a House name, By Kirkcaldy. No street name or house number.

Once successfully delivered a 21st birthday card to…

the blonde twins in the pink house, [town name] Essex.

George Fischer in Keswick used to have a whole display in the doorway of cards from all over the world that had made it to them with really bad addresses.

The best I remember

The big climbing shop
Near the lake
Cumbria.

My Dad sat next to an American woman on a flight to the USA and must have told her he lectured at Newcastle Uni. She promised to send him a book she’d written and months later it arrived, addressed to:

Sir Barry (Globalti)
Newcastle
England

Our surname isn’t that common so I guess it wasn’t too hard a challenge for the GPO!

I once received a postcard from Australia with this address-

Andy R
Famous in Ballaugh
Isle of Man.

While living and working in rural South Korea, I had a letter sent from the CRB people, to my apartment address in town, complete gibberish on the address for some reason, nothing like what is should have been.

Got into work one day, and there on my desk at school, was this letter.

Postman had seen it, realised it was from the UK, and as I was the only UK person in town, and h didn’t want it getting stolen so took it to work for me, There were 30+ Russians and Polish there, half a dozen Africans, an American and me.

i was sent a package of biscuits, tea, coffee and chocolate from the UK. The whole address was wrong, except for my name and the country (Finland). It reached me fine. I was quite impressed!

Not quite the same but I once went to work to find a birthday card on my desk that had been addressed to my old flat from about 2 years before, still have no idea how it made it to my work desk as I never got mail sent there.

surely these are least precise addresses? some of them are quite accurate…

Not quite the same but I once went to work to find a birthday card on my desk that had been addressed to my old flat from about 2 years before, still have no idea how it made it to my work desk as I never got mail sent there.

When I bought my first house, we use to get a fair bit of junk mail addressed to a guy who’s name I recognised, and it turned out he worked in the same office as me. I didn’t actually know him, and he didn’t know me (and certainly wouldn’t know I lived in his old house as he’d moved 6 years earlier)

But once a week I would drop the Mail on his desk before he arrived, and watch him arrive and look confused while he sat and opened it 🙂

A few months back we got one addressed to:

[My first name], [Wife’s nickname] and [Son’s first name],
Marsden,
Huddersfield

Marsden has 3000 or so households, but it still got to us. My wife’s sister had half-written the address but without the house number, street name or postcode, and had then forgotten to look it up properly and just posted it. No idea why she left our surname off. Our postman figured it out from my son’s name, which is fairly uncommon.

had a letter with a UK 2nd class stamp to Germany, where my name and zipcode were correct (zipcode here covers the entire city centre area), and the first letter of the street was correct (and the “strasse” bit on the end, but most streets have that).
it got to me within 2 days of posting.

I liked this one

Your man Henderson, that boy with the glasses who is doing a PhD up here at Queen’s in Belfast
Buncrana, County Donegal

With the message inside saying “if this has arrived, you live in a village”

My uncle is memorable enough that he once got a letter addressed to “Buzz – somewhere above the shops in Marske-by-the-Sea”. It had a population of about 10,000 at the time.

I work form a parcel company based in the midlands and we often got pallets addressed to a dye house in Lancashire called , and I kid you not

Mycock Lancashire ,no street name as it was unadopted and no postcode , try asking in the local news agents where “mycock” was at 8am of a morning and listen to the laughter