One of the delights of family historians is to find and view the house and area where their ancestors lived. Easy enough you'd think, just enter the name into a site like MultiMap, and view the map.

Go ahead then, try it with Harbour Place where many of the town's mariners lived in the 1891 census. You will draw a blank because it no longer exists. Woodlawn Street does though and is in fact the same place under a different name.

To find out why this came about we have to go back to 1946 when Whitstable Council decided to end the anomalies of road names in the town. As Whistable had grown from the merging of several hamlets it was not uncommon to have more than one road of the same, or similar sounding, name. Additionally Herne Bay Road was a meandering road that started at Church Street, the centre of old Whitstable, and carried along north of Tankerton before leaving the town at Swalecliffe. Much confusion was thereby caused for visitors and very often local residents in locating a house.

We have listed here the original names of roads and the proposed names for them at the time. The Y or N shows whether these proposals were actioned.

The minutes of the meeting of the town council recorded that it was something that the town badly needed, yet they were aware that many residents would not welcome the changes, but that in the long term the benefits would more than justify themselves in years to come.

Councillor C. E. Edkins asked if it was possible to have the houses numbered. The Surveyor (Mr. G. S. Dunkin) said that it would be possible to re-number roads but that some roads were not sufficiecntly made up to warrant it, adding that it always led to chaos when new houses were built on undeveloped land between existing houses. When Councillor J. H. Woodman asked at whose expense any re-numbering would be done, he was told it would be at the householders' expense.