PostTowns by Area:

PostTowns are generally Cities or major towns, which form an element of a “postally correct” UK address; there are approximately 1,500 in use (see below). Just as postcode “Sectors” have become widely adopted in numerous business (marketing, logistics, distribution, sales territories) and social applications, government statistics, etc, so to has the PostTown become a geographic reference point. Most of the UK’s 124 postal Areas are “known by” or referred to by one of their PostTowns (e.g. AB = Aberdeen, B = Birmingham, BA = Bath, etc); this helps to interpret them, but the actual geographic coverage of a postal Area can surprise those who interpret such literally. This is illustrated below by the “AB” Area which is covered by 24 PostTowns, but equally applies to many others. Most Areas comprise many PostTowns; the exception is for the 8 London postal Areas (E, EC, N, NW, SE, SW, W, WC) where the inverse applies as the single PostTown of “London” is used across all 8 areas. Though PostTowns are largely unique, there are a few places in the UK with the same name being PostTowns; these are shown at the foot of this page.

If you click on a PostTown in the list, a custom browser window will open displaying salient information, including where available: map location, Grid reference, population, dialing code, administrative hierarchy, County, etc.
Note: We are progressively making this functionality “live” ~ our apologies if you encounter lack of content during this process.

Notes re PostTowns: