It feels rather odd to see a local place on HN. On a tangent, Diamond Geezer posted about their 15,000,000th visitor[1]. HN came in 4th for referrals and was noted “Hacker News are an American aggregator portal who've only sent people here a dozen times but in such huge numbers that they're fourth”.
This adds a little context behind why when I lived in Bromley I was always told to write "Kent" on post, even though I wasn't in Kent. Apparently it was indeed fully in Kent at some point.
The non-obvious thing that's supposedly still required now is the "Postal Town". By non-obvious I mean it's not obvious what the postal town would be for villages miles away from any town.
A correct Postcode is much more specific and overrides the need for a Postal Town.
The vast majority of Royal Mail addresses are analysed automatically (google "royal mail ILSM") and then this info is encoded on the special RM4SCC barcode and machine read from that point on. It drops back into human sorting once it's got to the local delivery office.
There's still the small group within Royal Mail who do their best to work out where to deliver items with incomplete, incorrect or cryptic addresses. Plenty of examples of people getting mail successfully delivered with addresses like:
Lady with a big white dog (Sarah? The lady not the dog)
Said she lives next to a small church
Some village in East Suffolk with a short name
(Note the oddities link above demonstrates that "building name/number + postcode" is not guaranteed to be unique, although the number of duplicates is quite low.)
I used to work with a company in Somerset whose official address is "The Barn on Church Lane". Never had any problems with shipping or mailing, but had many discussions over the years with American clerks who wouldn't believe it was a valid address.
Very random to see a post about my local station appear on the front page of HN.
If anyone wants a free iPhone app to check train times from Kent House (other stations are available, but may not be featured on HN), here's one Claude and I wrote:
It feels rather odd to see a local place on HN. On a tangent, Diamond Geezer posted about their 15,000,000th visitor[1]. HN came in 4th for referrals and was noted “Hacker News are an American aggregator portal who've only sent people here a dozen times but in such huge numbers that they're fourth”.
[1] https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2026/05/fifteen-million.h...
This adds a little context behind why when I lived in Bromley I was always told to write "Kent" on post, even though I wasn't in Kent. Apparently it was indeed fully in Kent at some point.
Royal Mail dropped the requirement for the county name in an address back in 1996 (30 years ago!): Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_counties_of_the_United_...
The non-obvious thing that's supposedly still required now is the "Postal Town". By non-obvious I mean it's not obvious what the postal town would be for villages miles away from any town.
A correct Postcode is much more specific and overrides the need for a Postal Town.
The vast majority of Royal Mail addresses are analysed automatically (google "royal mail ILSM") and then this info is encoded on the special RM4SCC barcode and machine read from that point on. It drops back into human sorting once it's got to the local delivery office.
There's still the small group within Royal Mail who do their best to work out where to deliver items with incomplete, incorrect or cryptic addresses. Plenty of examples of people getting mail successfully delivered with addresses like:
Also here's a different bunch of oddities: https://paulplowman.com/stuff/uk-address-oddities/Safest thing to do is look up the address on the Royal Mail "Find a Postcode" link: https://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode?iid=RM0624_NAV_PER... as that gives the definitive address that they are looking for.
(Note the oddities link above demonstrates that "building name/number + postcode" is not guaranteed to be unique, although the number of duplicates is quite low.)
I used to work with a company in Somerset whose official address is "The Barn on Church Lane". Never had any problems with shipping or mailing, but had many discussions over the years with American clerks who wouldn't believe it was a valid address.
Always glad to see south London get the love it needs.
Many stations along that line (Clockhouse, Elmers End, Ladywell) have interesting histories
Very random to see a post about my local station appear on the front page of HN.
If anyone wants a free iPhone app to check train times from Kent House (other stations are available, but may not be featured on HN), here's one Claude and I wrote:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/traintrack-uk/id6504205950
Random indeed - I’m also just down the road. :)
Oh hello, neighbours!
I only remember that station because of the weird road