To think if you live in a London Borough you live in London

[MariahLynn]

Saw this on twitter and thought about it twitter.com/yougov/status/1319226163278057472?s=21

Why does this create such controversy?

Surely If you live in a London Borough you are part of London.

I can’t see how anyone can live somewhere which has red buses, can vote for London mayor, pays council tax to a London Borough and maintain they live in Essex or Kent or Surrey.

Is it about pretending to be posher?

Royal Mail explains why London towns still have Essex, Kent and Surrey postcodes
They're definitely still part of the capital

BY ELLIE MCKINNELL
13:58, 21 JUL 2020

Some areas of the capital don't have the classic London postcode
There's always been a big debate about certain towns that are on the outskirts of the capital and if they technically are London.

Places like Croydon and Kingston are sometimes deemed Surrey, Bromley and Orpington incorrected labelled Kent and Epping Forest and Dagenham referred to as Essex.

During these heated debates many of those of the opinion that these places aren't London use the postcode argument - if they're in London why don't they have a London postcode?

It's a fair question, even if you don't take it as evidence of Croydon being in Surrey.

We asked the Royal Mail why this was the case, and the answer makes a lot of sense.

Firstly, those first one or two letters of the postcode, called the Postcode Area, is totally independent of political boundaries, and postal addresses use the name of the relevant Post Town, rather than county names.

The short answer about why these areas aren't part of the SW, NE etc. groups is history.

"So, when Greater London was formally created in 1965, and when county boundaries were changed in 1974, the General Post Office had already established an independent system for defining the UK’s Postcode Areas to ensure the efficient sortation of mail

Basically the Post Office had a system in place and just because the definition of London changed didn't mean it was going to reorganise itself - fair enough!

So next time someone tells you Kingston is in Surrey just point out it's a London Borough and the KT postcode doesn't mean anything other than where the post is sorted.

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Thanks for that @LilacCandle - that's why I've regarded the comments on this thread about "but it is / isn't a London postcode" completely spurious. Those codes are just how the Royal Mail have organised their sorting offices and divvied up the country.

I grew up in a Dartford postcode in a London Borough. I rarely went to Dartford (except to go through the tunnel), and felt no affinity for the place just because of a postcode!

I always think of the example of Saffron Walden in Essex, which has a Cambridge postcode - doesn't mean parts of Essex should be considered Cambridgeshire...

I live in a London borough but am in Essex, neither is posher, who gives a crap.
What kills me, is where certain inner London areas have been 'gentrified ' they suddenly have 'villages' hysterical....
Hackney, where I was born and bred and spent an amazing childhood, was the east end, now I see it referred to sometimes as North east London. Most people moved there in the 80s, as they couldnt afford north London prices, but probably felt the east end was beneath them. Mind you its outpriced there now, Forest Gate is the next hit, wonder where their village will be?

@coldwinternightsbrrr Morden! On the tube, zone 4, SW20

[quote YellowandGreenToBeSeen]@Ohalrightthen urban areas have woods.

Off the top of my head, woods and trees are found in these areas of Actual London:

Hampstead Heath
Queens Wood
Epping Forest
Richmond Park
Hyde Park
Highgate Woods
Stanmore Common
Hadley Wood
Letts Wood
Wick Woods

I’m sure others will think of others.[/quote]
Wimbledon Common

I'm London Borough of Merton
My address says Surrey and I have a CR postcode. Two roads away is a SW postcode (I bet everyone can guess where I live )

Reading isn't London whatsoever!

@TheWristBoundLatexBitch

I'm London Borough of Merton My address says Surrey and I have a CR postcode. Two roads away is a SW postcode (I bet everyone can guess where I live )

When they first opened in S Wimbledon, Firezza would deliver to SW20 & CR4, but not to SM4 which they had to cross over to get to CR4...

Merton, for all the dropdown menus that insist on putting Surrey in its address, isn't even an outer London borough as you have to go through another London borough in order to get out of London

I don’t understand why people still argue about this. London is made up of boroughs. Everything within those boroughs is in London. I live in the London borough of Bromley which is in....London. There’s no other relevant consideration other than the actual legal definition. I think it must be an age / parochialism thing. Do they think Brixton is still in Surrey as well because it used to be a few hundred years ago? 😂😂

Does SM stand for Sutton-Morden? Because there’s no M in Sutton so why would that be used.

If your post code starts with E, B, W or S you live in London. If you live in a London Borough with a different post code eg TW, you live in Greater London

Brixton became part of London in 1889 so 131 years ago, leaving Surrey.

I wonder if London will ever expand again?

@Hiddennameforever

I used to live in Edgware and I always said I live in London. I hated adding Middlesex.

why ?

i think it's nothing to do with poshness.
but a sense of place, and link with a past that stretches back centuries.
some are more aware or this, in touch with it.
others are not.
but i don't really understand why it is such a contentious issue.
it's a bit like religion. there's no end to it. no factual answer.
it's subjective largely, as to how people feel. identity. chill out.

Romford is Essex. Gavel slammed down.

Do they think Brixton is still in Surrey as well because it used to be a few hundred years ago?

See as someone born & bred in Brixton in the 80s/90s I definitely consider myself a Londoner. I also think I had a very different experience to someone growing up in the outer zones or Surrey. But parts of London were very different then with much less gentrification of inner zones & it was generally more desirable to live further out.
Perhaps it is about identity as another poster said. My parents were immigrants & I didn't actually meet/know anyone who wasn't 2nd gen until I went to uni.

I've lived in Muswell Hill and Ilford only one of them was actually London.

Blimey - I cant believe where Croydon is. Realise I’ve had a very hazy (wrong) understanding of this. Despite having spent time in Croydon courts over the years (working). I thought it was far further south than it is. My mental map was very wrong there.

Live in zone 1 though so my instinctive ‘London’ stops eg going north at the Euston road Then it is ‘north London’ which stops at the north circular. Then ‘outer fringe’ bits of ‘Greater London’. Similar for all parts of compass.
South London presents particular wonky perspective problems for me as once I cross the river I feel more remote from ‘London’ more quickly.
Hence Croydon confusion.
If that list Croydon seems the least ‘London’ other than reading which is obviously not london.

Do they think Brixton is still in Surrey

God, yes. And Bromley is in Kent.

I feel like neither explain us! I fall under the south London / Surrey thing and usually feel conflicted.

I don't feel I am proper London but I also feel more London than using Surrey suggests!

It's all administrative. Changes in administrative boundaries.

If Romford was in Essex for 500+ years it doesn't suddenly become London because a bureaucrat decided it was easier to lump it in with London. Same with places like Croydon and Richmond.

It happens all over the country. For some reason Hull, which had been in East Yorkshire for centuries, suddenly became part of an administrative area called Humberside. The residents didn't then stop being Yorkshire folk.

As @AntiHop says, Middlesex doesn't exist so the towns like Twickenham, Teddington, Strawberry Hill etc, belong to the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. They don't actually belong anywhere else (no other county as such)

I think people often describe their location as London/‘not London’ depending on who they are talking to.
When living in the area I would have described myself as living in Ruislip to people living within Greater London and the surrounding areas, such as West Wickham, and just London to everyone else.

I have read London too many times and it is starting to sound strange. When typing London I was almost questioning myself if our capital is called London at all!
London, London, London...

@MariahLynn Yes, it does. Sutton and Morden (which is actually in Merton, and whose posher parts have an SW19 or SW20 postcode)