I realize this question has been asked in terms of mail, but allow me to thread hijack slightly. What do the ambulance drivers do? I mean, it’s not a huge problem if the postal carrier takes an extra five minutes to find Sutcliffe House when he’s new on the route, but it’s a rather different matter with a paramedic.
And worse are the stores that list addresses as 100 So-and-so Mall. But smaller malls aren’t listed on the maps.
The highest ordinal street number in the US is 579th Avenue, in Maricopa County, Arizona. The number is based off the Phoenix address grid, so it’s about 58 miles west of that city.
Of course, this excludes the high cardinal numbers that result from the Lyman Plan coordinate grid systems used in Utah and other areas settled by Mormons.
Where I worked (in urban and rural Devon) the ambulance service had excellent maps of every village with many house locations marked on it The city map was updated regularly by the city council informing them of every new road and address within the city limits.
We had access to these as we did emergency response mental health call-outs and used them as part of the job.
These maps are often ‘bootlegged’ and I have seen photocopies of them in use by several commercial delivery services!
To go back to the OP. THe sort of stories the poster was talking about are the Father Brown, Agagtha Christie type, which are set in an upper middle class environment.
As such the houses that are featured in these books are bigger than normal and would be known by all and sundry. “The old rectory” etc.
My grandmother lives in Lancashire. She has a named house. This has never caused problems, AFAIK.
[aside]
I’m looking at an address here in northern L.A. County: 36722
Can anybody beat that?
[/aside]