S postcode area

Postcode district boundaries: Bing / Google

The S postcode area, also known as the Sheffield postcode area, is a group of postcode districts in and around eight settlements with post town status: Barnsley, Chesterfield, Dronfield, Hope Valley, Mexborough, Rotherham, Sheffield and Worksop in England. Of these Dronfield and Mexborough have one postal district.

Currently the area has 49 non-sequentially numbered postal districts, three of which are 'non-geographical' being for bulk users in Sheffield and Rotherham.

The city of Sheffield which is the only city in Yorkshire and the Humber to have a single-digit designation for its postcode, is centred on the sequentially numbered districts from S1 to S14.

History

There was originally an S sector of the London postal district, which was abolished in 1868.

Similarly, there were also S-prefixed postal districts in the compass-based system used in Glasgow: the former S1, S2, S3 and S4 areas on the South Side of Glasgow now have postcodes from G41 to G44.

List of postcode areas in the United Kingdom

For the purposes of directing mail, the United Kingdom is divided by Royal Mail into postcode areas. The postcode area is the largest geographical unit used and forms the initial characters of the alphanumeric UK postcode. There are currently 121 geographic postcode areas in use in the UK and a further 3 often combined with these covering the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and Isle of Man.

Subdivision

Each postcode area is further divided into post towns and postcode districts. There are on average 20 postcode districts to a postcode area. The London post town is instead divided into several postcode areas.

Scope

The single or pair of letters chosen for postcode areas are generally intended as a mnemonic for the places served. Postcode areas, post towns and postcode districts do not follow political boundaries and usually serve much larger areas than the place names with which they are associated. For example, within the PA postcode area the PA1 and PA78 postcode districts are 140 miles apart; and the eight postcode areas of the London post town cover only 40% of Greater London. The remainder of its area is covered by sections of twelve adjoining postcode areas: EN, IG, RM, DA, BR, TN, CR, SM, KT, TW, HA and UB.