In a paged memory system, memory is allocated as pages and aligned on 2.sup.N -byte boundaries that are at least as large as the largest page size. Memory management information about the page is stored in a page header at the beginning of the page, while the remaining space of the page is devoted for storing objects. The page header for the page on which at least some of the object is stored is located by masking off the lower N-bits of the machine pointer. These operation can be applied to converting machine pointers into and out of page-offset numeric references.