On Dec 8, 1:00*pm, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
04:44:26 on Mon, 8 Dec 2008, MIG remarked:

It would be less good for the people of the part of east London that many
Londoners erroneously refer to as Essex, of course.

Brentwood is the first station in Essex on that line, as I recall.

Within the current administrative county of Essex, yes.

There have only ever been administrative boundaries.

There are postal boundaries too.

Ah true, and there are telephone codes, but they are there purely for
operational convenience of service providers and also change. They
are based on things like the number of delivery points and capacity of
exchanges.


I've never understood why past administrative boundaries are deemed to
have more significance than current ones and somehow represent eg the
"real" Essex.

Because many people grew up when (eg) Ilford was fully "in Essex", and
continue to refer to it as Essex because of its postal address. The
borough council, for example, publish the address of:

Town Hall, 128-142 High Road, Ilford, Essex, IG1 1DD

Yes, but it's still the address of the London Borough of Redbridge. I
don't think the Royal Mail includes county names in addresses any
more. They use Post Towns (which every village has, and don't imply
that the village is actually in that town). A postal address is
structured data about delivery points, not a description of where a
place really is.

There is a strange situation in Surrey I think in that some of their
administrative offices are not in the region that they administer (ie
Kingston).