In message
, at
05:30:59 on Mon, 8 Dec 2008, MIG remarked:

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,

Which rarely have published boundaries.

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.

And whose relevance to this conversation is a little obscure.

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

Yes, but it's still the address of the London Borough of Redbridge.

Which is in Essex.

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.

It's true that Post-towns for an address may not be in the same county
as the address - for example, some villages in Bucks have "Henley"
(Oxon) as the post town, but the village is still in Bucks.

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).

Some of Surrey's County Council offices are in the Borough Of Kingston,
an area they no longer administer.
--
Roland Perry