please empty your brain below
Wonderful, as always

Tom | 14.02.17 - 7:08 a.m. | #

Great detective work. Was it all done in a day? And by public transport? Do you manage to save time by writing it up while being jolted along on tubes and trains and buses? Perhaps a topic for another day - 'Secrets of a daily blogger'?

RayL | 14.02.17 - 7:37 a.m. | #

There are more WD postcodes if you look at the whole urbanised area and not just administrative boundaries. Would Bricket Wood AL2 count as well?

Sprout Eater | 14.02.17 - 7:51 a.m. | #

London's first postcodes chronologically are in the CR0 postcode area, as Croydon was the second area, after Norwich, to trial them. As new postcodes are being created all the time, I haven't been able to identify a most recent one.

timbo | 14.02.17 - 8:02 a.m. | #

Super stuff and delightfully opaque results!

Kevin | 14.02.17 - 8:03 a.m. | #

Greetings from the city in possession of one of London's 'missing' postcodes (the other being Newcastle).

Sarah | Homepage | 14.02.17 - 8:13 a.m. | #

Out of interest, what source are you using to confirm these postcodes? Royal Mail's own postcode checker has 3 East Street down as BR1 1AB and they are probably more reliable than the Ask Italian website.

James | 14.02.17 - 8:33 a.m. | #

So let me see if i understand correctly; there are London postal district postcodes and then there postcodes that are used in London but are not London postal district postcodes?!

Grumpy Anon | 14.02.17 - 8:54 a.m. | #

Grumpy Anon: The short answer is yes. A London district postcode is any one where the post town associated is London. The other codes in Greater London want you to use a town descriptor other than London.

slakko | 14.02.17 - 9:02 a.m. | #

Timbo, Newest postcode district is Olympic Park E20, formerly (mainly E15). During construction the ODA offices on site had post code E20 12. Sweet.

scrumpy | 14.02.17 - 9:48 a.m. | #

“it was central Bromley which won the designation BR1, back when all of this was in Kent”

Bromley of course ceased to be part of the administrative county of Kent when Greater London was created on 1 April 1965, but did not get postcodes until a few years later:
“Postal coding is to start at Croydon on November 5 as the first stage of a 10-year plan under which every postal address will eventually be given a code. It follows a six-year experiment at Norwich, the first place in the world to use such a detailed system. … In the next two years it is hoped to introduce coding to Aberdeen, Belfast, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sheffield, Preston, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Coventry, Bristol, Southampton, Newport, Cardiff, Bromley, London (western district), Reading, Brighton, and Manchester.” – The Times, 12 October 1966

Though some large UK towns did have postal districts many years before detailed postcoding, BR1 seems not to have been in use until March 1968.

Rich | 14.02.17 - 10:03 a.m. | #

@Scrumpy
The newest Postcode district in London is indeed E20, but new individual postcodes (e.g E20 9YZ) are being created all the time and there must have been many new housing developments in the past five years requiring them.

timbo | 14.02.17 - 10:18 a.m. | #

Looks like another geographical/legal mystery, how you can occupy a house (or chalet) in Hertfordshire and pay council tax at Barnet rates (presumably paying it to Barnet Council). Is it something to do with the whereabouts of the entrance to the park?

Malcolm | 14.02.17 - 10:20 a.m. | #

Why stop at London? England's first postcode would be just over the border in Hertfordshire, AL1 is the centre of St. Albans. For the last, you'd have to go further afield: YO91 1XY is the postcode for Nestlé's chocolate factory in York. As for the first and last in the whole of the UK, you'd have to go north of the border: AB10 is in Aberdeen (seems all of the ABs suffered from postcode exhaustion), while the last, ZE3, is on the southern tip of Shetland's mainland.

TheLupineOne | 14.02.17 - 11:17 a.m. | #

The Army & Navy name remained in existence for many, many years and certainly into the 1990s and possibly the 2000s. I think the store may have eventually become a House of Fraser again but don't quote me on that or perhaps it became Habitat. When I was a child in the 80s my mum much preferred Allders and Debenhams over Army & Navy but I remember some visits to the store and the excitement of walking over the bridge connecting both sites. I think the Lewisham brand had a bridge too.

| 14.02.17 - 11:29 a.m. | #

Pretty sure that restuarant has it's postcode wrong and it's not BR1 1AA. The postoffice website only lists the flats in that block of flats as using that postcode.

Sadly I can't easily find what it should be because the Royal Mail website is now fairly useless if searching on address rather than postcode (if you type East Street it just says there are too many matches).

In a previous job I used to have access to the latest royal mail PAF file so could look it up, but I don't have access to the data now.

Jon Combe | 14.02.17 - 12:59 p.m. | #

3 East Street is listed on the Royal Mail's own Postcode Finder as BR1 1AB

timbo | 14.02.17 - 1:05 p.m. | #

If I understand DG correctly the first postcodes in an area are assigned to the local Post Office or Sorting Office. From my youth listening to Radio 1 in the 60's & 70's all correspondence, competition entries etc had to be addressed to the BBC at London W1A 1AA. Were 'strings pulled' to get an easily remembered postcode or is it just a fortunate anomaly? I will also echo others thanks for a fascinating post & for the entertainment you provide for me every day.

Andy S | 14.02.17 - 2:03 p.m. | #

I remember that when the trial started Norwich's postcodes started NOR, followed by a two-digit number and a letter. So maybe Croydon, like Slough, have a relic of that in that they have CR0 (or CRO) and SL0 (or SLO) zones?

A lot of Londoners misinterpreted the whole idea of postcodes when they were introduced. They were used to the 1917-era numbered postal districts and though the postcode was just the bit afterwards, so many wrote them like this:
30 Calderwood Street,
Woolwich S.E.18
6QH

Alan Burkitt-Gray | 14.02.17 - 2:07 p.m. | #

A further thought. There must be some mapping between postcodes and local authority boundaries, if only because there are lots of systems that allow you to find your MP by typing in your postcode. For example http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/

Does this mean each tiny block of postcodes (as defined by all the numbers and letters) are entirely in one local-government ward, which are then assembled to make up constituencies?

Alan Burkitt-Gray | 14.02.17 - 2:16 p.m. | #

Who'd have thought something so seemingly simple would end up being so wonderfully complicated!

Cornish Cockney | 14.02.17 - 2:18 p.m. | #

@Alan Burkitt-Gray

For the most part such mappings are accurate enough, as individual postcodes cover very small areas so few of them would transcend a ward boundary, let alone a constituency. And wards can in any case be redefined to keep postcodes together. But there will doubtless be a few exceptions. Postcodes, after all, exist for the use of Royal Mail, and everyone else has to take them "as is"

A common situation is that the borough boundary follows a main road, but delivery rounds cover culs de sac on both sides of the road, and the postcodes reflect that.

I know for example that there are a few residents on the border between LBs Hounslow and Richmond who get turned away from using their local "amenity site" (rubbish tip) because they live on the Richmond side of the boundary but their proof of address gives their postcodes as TW3 or TW7, 99% of which postal areas are in Hounslow. (In this case I think the Richmond enclaves do have their own specific postcodes within the TW3/TW7 area codes, but the staff only look at the first bit - after all, they can't be expected to know every single postcode in the borough)

timbo | 14.02.17 - 4:38 p.m. | #

Are there no BR1 postcodes in the range 0AA-0ZZ? Those would come before 1AA alphabetically and numerically.

dg writes: No.

jamie | 14.02.17 - 5:34 p.m. | #

This reminds me of the one place outside Greater London with a London postcode: the hamlet of Sewardstone in the Lea Valley. Administratively in the parish of Waltham Abbey in Essex, but its postal service comes from Chingford which gives it an E4 postcode.

Could be an interesting place for a visit. Looks pretty rural there, even though it's only a skip across the river from Enfield Lock.

greg | 14.02.17 - 5:53 p.m. | #

<<So maybe it's not Ask. A number of online services peddle postcode information, and if you ask them where BR1 1AA is located they don't mention East Street at all. Instead they suggest that this super-postcode is to be found a quarter of a mile down the High Street, up a rather less important sideroad, in a newbuild block

The postcode/address finder on the Royal Mail website does indeed return BR1 1AA as:

"Flat 1
Henry House
Ringers Road
BROMLEY
BR1 1AA"

Great post as ever DG

red cardinal | 14.02.17 - 5:59 p.m. | #

Actually I think a few of the Elstree Park properties do pay Hertfordshire council tax.

You can search for the postcode WD6 2RW at http://cti.voa.gov.uk/cti/inits.asp and it shows numbers 41/43/45/47 as in Hertsmere with the rest of the postcode in Barnet.

dg writes: The documents I've seen suggest that everyone pays the Band A rate for Barnet, regardless of postcode.

greatkingrat | 14.02.17 - 7:04 p.m. | #

@timbo - Is N1C (covering the development north of Kings Cross Station) not newer than E20?

Peter CS | 14.02.17 - 7:13 p.m. | #

N1C seems to have been created in 2012

dg writes: 2011.

New postcodes are being created all the time - here is the Royal Mail's list of new sectors for January. Individual delivery points are not listed.

I think the newest in London are in the Nine Elms area, with new postcodes in SW8 and SW11

timbo | 14.02.17 - 8:45 p.m. | #

Notwithstanding all the above, the UK postcode system is pretty good and useful. I remember the initial pilot - my parents near Norwich had a postcode of the form NOR nnx.

The other simultaneous pilot in Croydon had similar codes of the form CRO nnx. To this day, I think Croydon is the only postcode area to have a zero in the first half of the postcode, replacing the original letter "O" of the pilot.

dg writes: The other zero districts are BL0, BS0, CM0, FY0, HA0, PR0, SL0 and SS0.

Tim | 14.02.17 - 10:12 p.m. | #

No wonder my post never arrives.

The walkway between the two Army & Navy buildings in Bromley was always a bit odd as the floor numbers didn't match: you'd cross from level 2 to level 3, with hilarious consequences.

Ned | 14.02.17 - 11:38 p.m. | #

Traditionally xxnnx 1AA was the postcode for the relevant Sorting Office, but with most sorting now being done at a few central locations, a significant number have either relocated (with a different postcode), been merged with other offices, or been "downgraded" to have a postcode matching the rest of the road they're on.

So, for example, the Northern District Office in Almeida Street, Islington, was closed a few years ago and is now handled by a new Delivery Office off the New North Road with a postcode of N1 7ED.

Bow comes close, with E3 2AA, and Camden retains NW1 1AA, but they appear to be few and far between nowadays.

Incidentally, the Delivery Office for Bromley is now on Sherman Road, with a postcode of BR1 3QH.

Barry S | 15.02.17 - 2:44 a.m. | #

Gosh, I live in AL1. Never realised it had such distinction, alphabetically speaking.

it seems there are no AL0 codes, and AL1 1AA and a few other early codes seem to be out of use, so the first seems to be AL1 1AG along London Road, which includes the old (and closed) London Road railway station.

Andrew | 15.02.17 - 8:11 a.m. | #

A 1AA postcode that was never a main post office is SW1A 1AA, which is Buckingham Palace.

SW1A 2AA is 10 Downing Street

3078260061 | 15.02.17 - 9:31 a.m. | #

Ned: I never knew that. I'm sure it would have given rise to plenty of Are You Being Served comic opportunities!

Also in the borough of Bromley, the main post office in Beckenham finally lost the coveted BR3 1AA when it moved from into WH Smith. The sorting office disappeared many years ago (and replaced with a church) when the Royal Mail moved to an industrial estate at Elmers End close to the boundary with LB Croydon. I think the light boxes saying vans reversing (or words to that affect) remained. The post office, in its brick curved building (possibly 30s or 50s) remained on the side of the roundabout opposite the listed Art Deco cinema. It has now moved into the branch of WH Smith which, to be fair, is centrally located in the high street, though I don't know how well it copes with queues. Some years ago I made the mistake of queuing for a delivery at the old post office only to be told I should be at the Royal Mail sorting office. The post office only kept special deliveries or something. It reminds me of the time I told the counter staff at Trafalgar Square post office that the post boxes built in to the exterior wall were full. "Nothing to do with us, they belong to Royal Mail." Oh.

| 15.02.17 - 8:28 p.m. | #

@timbo, @Alan Burkitt-Gray – Indeed, some postcodes even straddle the England/Wales or England/Scotland border.

For example, TD9 0TU is the postcode for two cottages either side of Kershope Burn, which forms the Anglo-Scottish border. They are both under the post town of Newcastleton and are appropriately named English Kershope and Scotch Kershope. Similarly, TD15 1UY covers several addresses around Edrington Castle in Scotland and nearby Low Cocklaw in England.

In SY22 6EJ, Llanymynech, the former Lion Hotel itself straddles the Anglo-Welsh border: “When Montgomeryshire was dry it was legal to drink on Sundays in the two English bars of the Lion but not the Welsh bar.”

Rich | 15.02.17 - 10:01 p.m. | #

TfL's head office postcode is SW1H 0TL, which I don't think is a coincidence. Radio 4 was W1A 4WW for a while, but they seem to have dropped that.

Andrew S | 15.02.17 - 10:08 p.m. | #











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