UK address: district or county?

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Accepted answer

The historical "county-based" system of local government in the England started to become unworkable in the 19th century, because of the growth of big cities outside London, such as Manchester, Birmingham, etc.

Various changes were made starting from that time, but in the late 20th century the structure was completely redefined.

The original 48 counties have been replaced by 83, some of which are divided into several "districts." Some, but not all, of the old county names have been retained in the new list of counties. The names that no longer have any local government status, but are still used informally and in historical references, are now called "ceremonial counties". (These include the largest county in the original list of 48, Yorkshire.)

At the same time, the Post Office also changed the its system for addressing letters (which was based on the original 48 counties), but moved a different system that does not match the new local government counties and districts. The key element of the new Post Office system is the Post Code (equivalent to USA Zip Code).

The only essential parts of a mailing address in the UK are the house name or number, the street name, and the post code. The post code on its own is enough to find a location using SatNav systems, etc.

In practice, it is usual to include additional information giving the town or village name, and the postal district if that is different, as a cross check if the postcode becomes illegible. It is usually fairly easy to guess the district name (or the main town/city in the district) from the first two letters of the postcode - for example the postal districts around Nottingham have codes NG1 to NG35. For example an address in the city of Nottingham would just be 

house number + street name
Nottingham
postcode

but an address in the nearby village of Gotham (yes, it really does exist!) would be 

house number + street name
Gotham
Nottingham
postcode

If you know some of the information, you can do a search to get the "correct" postal address from this website: http://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode

If you need to give a UK address to use on a website, usually you only need to type the minimum amount of information (number, street, postcode), and the rest will be filled in automatically using the Post Office's search function.

Upvote:2

Translating it with an Americanized point of view ...

  • county = state
  • district = county
  • city = city
  • locality = neighborhood

Personally I would write out everything just to be safe. My address in Thailand has numerous districts, sub-districts, etc and have had some mail come through without every line and some that got sent back.

Upvote:4

I need to understand a little about UK address before I travel to there.

No you don't, if you are a normal visitor. Lots of people travel to the UK with little or no comprehension of how UK postal addresses work. I expect a large number of UK citizens have no comprehensive understanding of the structure of UK postal addresses according to Royal Mail. Most people just effectively copy and paste addresses.

When I write a letter to that address, do I have to write every line of above?

Normally you would copy whatever you are given, but you would omit all the classification words ending in a colon

18 CONTESSA CLOSE
KINGS HILL,
WEST MALLING
TONBRIDGE AND MALLING,
KENT
ME19 4PG

As others have said, in 99% of cases, the first and last lines are sufficient but most people just copy whatever they are given without worrying about it.

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