Addresses of homes and properties
It's still reasonably common to see a phone number in writing preceded with "T:" or "Tel:" and an e-mail or web address similarly, though I expect most people know what these things are without the labels.
It's never been the case though that postal addresses have been treated like that. They are of course the pre-eminent address for the physical location of buildings - not least because they use place names with which we are familiar.
It's never been the case though that postal addresses have been treated like that. They are of course the pre-eminent address for the physical location of buildings - not least because they use place names with which we are familiar.
There are I think relatively few examples of places where the settlement the person lives is in a different county to the post town they must include in their address - Thetford is one such place I think. This needn't be a problem insofar as since 1998 it has not been required to include a county name in a postal address. You may include the name of a county though - but should it be the name of the county in which the post town lies or where your house lies?
The post town is really the 'town' in which your postal delivery office lies but the postal address is so well-ingrained into our life and culture that people think it is definitive outside of the postal system - thus when an area near me was transferred into my borough from a neighbouring borough, the councils felt it necessary to explain that "your address won't change". [Address would almost universally be taken to mean postal address back then - rather illustrating the phenomenon.]
When it comes to counties, the system is chaotic. Royal Mail didn't help itself by partly taking on board the names of local authorities used in the 1970s local government reorganisation, thus perpetuating the myth that local government decides postal addresses. A myth that extends its reach even to postcodes: Why haven't London postcodes been extended to the whole of (Greater) London is a question fairly often asked.
So now we have upper tier and single tier local authorities bearing the names that are recognisably counties - typically something -shire, and albeit with quite different boundaries in several cases, but we also have single tier authorities containing the name of a county - Cheshire West and Chester is one. If I am correctly informed, Royal Mail allows the inclusion of top tier authority names in postal addresses [I think that's what they mean, but I also think they refer to administrative counties, which is a problem.] but I can't see it happening with some of the more cumbersome names and if (using my example) you live in the post town of CHESTER, you are hardly likely to put Cheshire West and Chester as your county. If you live in Cheshire West and Chester or in East Cheshire, you would reasonably put 'Cheshire' as your county, but there is no Cheshire County Council, so it seems this is not allowed.
I say it is not allowed because it seems that the Royal Mail does not allow ceremonial county names in postal addresses. Some would be absurd - MANCHESTER, Greater Manchester, for example - but you might also get two places of the same name in a ceremonial county - Bromley, for example (though the railways tackled this by calling one station Bromley-by-Bow and this has been taken up by the a local area.)
Royal Mail does (apparently) allow historic / traditional county names. That gets interesting with the LONDON post town, because it straddles several historic counties, so the rule of using the post town's county name fails.
And you may continue to use the former postal county. Fine - except for that some of the 1970s Local Government inventions of the 1970s are likely to be unpopular.
Postcodes by contrast to this shambles are a masterstroke. They directly route a post item through the post office's systems. Do people get annoyed that they live in 'IG' or claim that they don't/shouldn't? On the whole, no, as far as I can tell, and the mnemonic codes that signify the Royal mail sorting office (at the time of coding - some have closed but the codes remained) have persisted along with the rest of the postcode. Yes there are calls to change postcodes to meet perceptions of locations of political geography - the fact of the anomalous London postcodes where the initial letters are mainly compass doesn't help this.
The post town is really the 'town' in which your postal delivery office lies but the postal address is so well-ingrained into our life and culture that people think it is definitive outside of the postal system - thus when an area near me was transferred into my borough from a neighbouring borough, the councils felt it necessary to explain that "your address won't change". [Address would almost universally be taken to mean postal address back then - rather illustrating the phenomenon.]
When it comes to counties, the system is chaotic. Royal Mail didn't help itself by partly taking on board the names of local authorities used in the 1970s local government reorganisation, thus perpetuating the myth that local government decides postal addresses. A myth that extends its reach even to postcodes: Why haven't London postcodes been extended to the whole of (Greater) London is a question fairly often asked.
So now we have upper tier and single tier local authorities bearing the names that are recognisably counties - typically something -shire, and albeit with quite different boundaries in several cases, but we also have single tier authorities containing the name of a county - Cheshire West and Chester is one. If I am correctly informed, Royal Mail allows the inclusion of top tier authority names in postal addresses [I think that's what they mean, but I also think they refer to administrative counties, which is a problem.] but I can't see it happening with some of the more cumbersome names and if (using my example) you live in the post town of CHESTER, you are hardly likely to put Cheshire West and Chester as your county. If you live in Cheshire West and Chester or in East Cheshire, you would reasonably put 'Cheshire' as your county, but there is no Cheshire County Council, so it seems this is not allowed.
I say it is not allowed because it seems that the Royal Mail does not allow ceremonial county names in postal addresses. Some would be absurd - MANCHESTER, Greater Manchester, for example - but you might also get two places of the same name in a ceremonial county - Bromley, for example (though the railways tackled this by calling one station Bromley-by-Bow and this has been taken up by the a local area.)
Royal Mail does (apparently) allow historic / traditional county names. That gets interesting with the LONDON post town, because it straddles several historic counties, so the rule of using the post town's county name fails.
And you may continue to use the former postal county. Fine - except for that some of the 1970s Local Government inventions of the 1970s are likely to be unpopular.
Postcodes by contrast to this shambles are a masterstroke. They directly route a post item through the post office's systems. Do people get annoyed that they live in 'IG' or claim that they don't/shouldn't? On the whole, no, as far as I can tell, and the mnemonic codes that signify the Royal mail sorting office (at the time of coding - some have closed but the codes remained) have persisted along with the rest of the postcode. Yes there are calls to change postcodes to meet perceptions of locations of political geography - the fact of the anomalous London postcodes where the initial letters are mainly compass doesn't help this.
Regarding Greater Manchester or for that matter Greater London, I have seem them used as county names, but they could look rather silly - see above. Why not just put Manchester, or London. Probably because these are also the names of post towns. I heard of an example of someone putting ROMFORD, London in address (perhaps more likely Romford, London) but from Royal Mail's point of view that is as misleading as putting Romford, Dartford.
So will labelling the county line solve this problem and if so, would it be taken up, and what would it look like?
Would ISO 3166-2 codes for local authorities help - they include a fairly mnemonic 3 letter code for each authority, or should we standardise on traditional counties but allow the county where the property stands to be shown, ignoring the post town?
In my meanderings I've omitted the point that prompted me to write - questions like:
Is Croydon in Surrey?
You might think you know what Surrey means, but it is ambiguous so some people will answer this question yes and others no. Some people think there's a definitive answer that all should comply with and many will not grasp the concept that it can be in two different counties by different definitions - Historic/traditional - Surrey; Former postal - Surrey; Ceremonial - Greater London; administrative - n/a - the GLA is not a county council.
So will labelling the county line solve this problem and if so, would it be taken up, and what would it look like?
Would ISO 3166-2 codes for local authorities help - they include a fairly mnemonic 3 letter code for each authority, or should we standardise on traditional counties but allow the county where the property stands to be shown, ignoring the post town?
In my meanderings I've omitted the point that prompted me to write - questions like:
Is Croydon in Surrey?
You might think you know what Surrey means, but it is ambiguous so some people will answer this question yes and others no. Some people think there's a definitive answer that all should comply with and many will not grasp the concept that it can be in two different counties by different definitions - Historic/traditional - Surrey; Former postal - Surrey; Ceremonial - Greater London; administrative - n/a - the GLA is not a county council.
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