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Archive 1Archive 2

What do SE, WC etc. stand for?

I'm puzzled about the indication in the "List of London postal districts" table that SE stands for South Eastern, WC stands for Western Central and so on. I grew up believing these stood for South East, West Central and so on. And East 17 even named themselves after the E17 postal district.

The article did once indicate these stood for South East, West Central etc. but they have since been changed during a rewrite. I suspect they were changed to accord with the British Postal Museum Information sheet on postcode history.

However, I do really wonder whether the British Postal Museum have got it wrong. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're wrong. (Or maybe I'm just wrong - these early-acquired beliefs can be hard to shake! - or maybe the terminology has changed over the years.) For example, This Google search of the Royal Mail site does seem to indicate it's West Central, not Western Central.

Anyway, if no one comes up with a good reason for leaving it as it is, I'll go ahead and change this article and all related articles to show South East, West Central and so on. --A bit iffy 16:54, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

The reason for the names is simple. The areas had - and still have - no geographic meaning. Western Central was the name of the chief sorting office for the area. The Northern district office at Islington - hence N1, Eastern district office is at Whitechapel - hence E1 for the area around it. Post codes are related to the delivery office - so, quite often are split across boroughs and indeed counties. In that context Northern, South-Eastern, etc makes sense. Kbthompson (talk) 18:40, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

This article has the wrong title

The area described is the London Postal _Area_, which is/was in turn sub-divided into Districts and Sub-Districts, as can be seen in information of official origin including:-

http://www.londonancestor.com/po/1map-t.htm - 1930 map, HMSO

and sundry non-official source. I suggest that it is well past the time that this should have been corrected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MBRZ48 (talk • contribs) 02:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Letters after the number in the postal district?

Some postcodes I've seen have a letter after the number, e.g. SW1P, EC2M, W1W. This seems to occur so frequently I'm not sure it's just an error, but this is not covered in the article. Can anyone explain, please? Postcodes (talk) 10:01, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I can certainly explain what is happening. The London Postal Districts are so deeply ingrained that it isn't considered practical to deal with postcode shortage there in the same way that they deal with it elsewhere (elsewhere, they subdivide the district, and give part of at a new number, as in BS12 -> BS12 & BS32). So, they retain the historical district, and add an alpha suffix.
Each sector can contain a maximum of 4000 individual postcodes (10*20*20) Mayalld (talk) 10:29, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Greenwich

[1] Some streets are not in the postal district. MRSC • Talk 19:02, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Newham

Newham includes some IG postcodes, and is not wholly "E". These occur only around the southeast boundary with Barking and Dagenham, where new development has taken place. Mivona (talk) 13:21, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Postcode district stubs (again)

I am concerned that a number of postcode district stubs have been recreated, it would appear for no other purpose than to provide inbound links to {{LondonSE}}. These stubs fork what is already contained in articles such as SE postcode area and the districts themselves. We've had extensive discussions about what to do with these stubs Talk:London_postal_district/Archive_1#Suggested_way_forward_for_postal_stubs and the consensus, aside from interference by sockpuppets, was to concentrate on the postcode area articles. Additionally the vote Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/London N1 was compromised by an army of sockpuppets of User:Runcorn, noted here Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 May 31. MRSC • Talk 13:15, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I know nothing about User:Runcorn and I do not read Talk:London_postal_district/Archive_1#Suggested_way_forward_for_postal_stubs as saying no London postcode districts should have articles. Many people think about London area by postcode and the articles are either useful in their own right, or at least as pointers to other articles about the local area. For example, SE postcode area is too broad. --Rumping (talk) 18:19, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
It's not a lot of use creating article stubs that contain information that is already held in tabular form in the SE postcode area article - where individual postcodes are related to their geographical constituents. Estate agents may think in post codes, but as they're unrelated to geographical or political realities, they're a little useless for writing wikipedia articles. This is not to deny the existence of postcodes, but they exist for the purpose of delivering letters. Grouping the articles by head district reduces duplication and does not involve any loss of information. Cheers Kbthompson (talk) 18:51, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
There was no suggestion made that you know User:Runcorn. Although as you come to mention it, your editing pattern is incredibly similar. So much so that your first edit mirrors his last, and those made immediately before and after. MRSC • Talk 22:00, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I have never touched London N14. My edits have been consistent with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/London N1 (which is why I started with London N1 and Talk:London_postal_district/Archive_1#Suggested_way_forward_for_postal_stubs, indeed in the later case, with your proposal. --Rumping (talk) 11:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Disregarding the compromised accounts in the AfD discussion, there was still support for keeping the postcode articles from established editors. It is not the case that the consensus was to merge them to area articles. Postcodes are not just used for delivering letters or by estate agents. They have a wider use and identification for all sorts of purposes. Evelyn Waugh, for example, used to walk up the hill to post letters, so they would be stamped NW3 and not NW11. Ty 20:53, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the good gentleman should have moved to Shoreditch, where he would have had access to five postal districts, sending to three different district offices in the space of a few streets ... Kbthompson (talk) 00:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Tottenham Court Road

"Tottenham Court Road is the only 'road' within the W1 postal district."

What about Edgware Road, part of which is in W1 202.164.55.202 (talk) 14:12, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Good point. I remember being surprised when reading this assertion before but simply accepted it even though it was unsourced. I've now corrected it as best I can.--A bit iffy (talk) 15:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

NE continued use

Every now and then I find documents with NE still in use after 1866. Here it is still being used in 1898. [2] MRSC (talk) 13:14, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

SW1A etc.

I can trace these back to 1970 which suggests they were in the original postcode allocation:

E1W on the other hand is clearly detailed in Royal Mail, Postcode Update 29, (1999).

We could do with a source that explicitly states what happened. MRSC (talk) 13:25, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Waltham Cross

what about the waltham cross part of london borough of enfield your missing that en8 the estate i live on holmesdale and the roads on bullsmoor lane are en8 like bullsmoor way you will see if you look on google! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.107.191.108 (talk • contribs)

I moved this down to the bottom of the page and added the unsigned template Lozleader (talk) 13:10, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
Is that true? Would you mind posting a link? (the burden lays with the editor adding information to supply sources, it's not up to the rest of us to go looking!) Lozleader (talk) 13:15, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
This probably reflects the (relatively) recent realignment of the borough boundary in 1994 [7] while the postal boundary remained as it was.Lozleader (talk) 15:17, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
Yep, here it is: [8]. it would sem the old boundary was along Bullsmoor lane more or less but was moved to the M25 (Holmesdale Tunnel).Lozleader (talk) 15:31, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
There are lots of tiny pockets of misalignments along the boundary where small areas overlap. Most affect either very little or no population. MRSC (talk) 17:22, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

London postal region

The section on the London postal region contained a table of postcode districts within Greater London. But Greater London is a local government area, not directly related to postal areas, so I removed the table. User:Justgravy has reverted this, with the comment: "it is correct says so on RM website!" But the citation (page 106) shows that the postal region covered entire postcode areas, including districts well beyond the Greater London boundary, so I have reverted the change again. Is there a specific Royal Mail webpage or other reliable source to support Justgravy's view? 19:21, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Your source shows both an inner and outer area which includes places such as St Albans, Watford and Epsom Postal Areas for the Outer section, which as you have said are well beyond the London boundary. However it does say "London Postal Region" above the map shown. Therefore it is your duty to include this in the article and I will leave the updating up to you with a table of all the postcode districts and a map of said districts similar (but obviously bigger) than the one before. 01:33, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

List

The list includes E20 Olympic Park although this doesn't seem to appear in the text. Is it perhaps a temporary designation valid only for the duration of the Games, or is it intended to be a permanent addition? Dawright12 (talk) 11:12, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

In the first column, the table includes links to articles about each of the London postcode areas. E postcode area refers to the new E20 district and cites a BBC News article confirming that it is intended to be permanent, to allow for the large number of new homes planned for the site. For want of a better term, Royal Mail seems to be using "Olympic Park" to refer to the locality, not just the sporting facilities that currently exist there. — Richardguk (talk) 12:16, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Head Districts

I see that the first district in each Area is called a head district while according to Doogal E1 is Mile End, Stepney, Whitechapel. Others include:

Oddly each of these pages have slightly differing Districts This one lists 'Head District' as in this article

Nigelgreenx (talk) 09:28, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Those websites mostly list multiple placenames names to describe the approximate coverage of the postcode districts (formerly "sub-districts of the London postal area"). So the webpages are not reliable sources for the district names. None of the websites claims to be using an official source.
Indeed, since Royal Mail no longer includes district and locality names in London postal addresses,[9] it's arguable that the names are now obsolete.
The names are shown in the following old maps (as cited in the article):
Note that the maps agree with each other for the named (outer) districts, leaving the central districts unnamed or labelled "head district". The older map seems to be from an official publication so should be the most reliable source (subject to any subsequent renamings).
The maps do contradict the table in the article in one respect: they leave unnamed all the sub-districts in EC (1–4) and WC (1–2). But this might be because they were too small to label. The maps also omit the much newer postcode districts of SE28 and E20, but these are universally known as Thamesmead and Olympic Park respectively so those entries in the table are uncontentious.
It is possible the some of the above websites might have copyied part of their contents from each other, or from past or present versions of the Wikipedia article, so care needs to be taken to distinguish available sources from reliable sources.
— Richardguk (talk) 11:41, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
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