OneGuyFromBarlick

In researching my family history, I have looked at Census Returns and local directories and found ancestors and relatives living in Blacko, mainly in Gisburn Road. It is quite clear that the house numbering in that road today is very different from the numbering in the 1870s through to the 1930s, making it difficult to locate the houses lived in by my ancestors.

Can anyone give me any information as to how to find out what the numbering system was in the past?

Welcome to the site Surfer.

One way would be with old issue large scale OS mapping. Some of our members have access to some issues and you may get a response, keep checking the thread.

One of the main problems with renumbering is that before, say for example 'Gisburn Rd' became officially Gisburn Rd all the way through Barrowford and Blacko, some of the old postal addresses may have been referenced as the terrace name. A possible example is the terrace 'Stone Edge View'. Now numbered as 440-446 (4 houses) and 448-460.(7 houses) The first addition maps show only two houses in the first row and five in the second. See Mario Lancashire maps. http://mario.lancashire.gov.uk/agsmario/default.aspx. I'm not saying this will solve your particular problem but it is worth remembering.

P is right. Changes in street numbering are a perennial problem for researchers where infill houses have been built on named roads. This may be the reason why terraces were given names in the first place. I know of no easy way round the problem. You usually have to pick up clues from multiple sources and one that has proved useful is the order of visit used by the enumerators in the early census surveys as they usually went house to house.