The county Middlesex to disappear

It is likely that the county and the word Middlesex is to disappear from our vocabulary.

It’s always been difficult to answer the question – “and where do you live?”  Answer.  “Teddington”.  Question – “where’s that then”?  Answer – “well it’s in Middlesex, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, which is in Surrey.  And actually it’s Greater London too and really it’s nearer to Kingston than Richmond.” 

A complicated answer but one that is part of our lives and our historic heritage too.

The Royal Mail has now announced that county names will no longer be used from the year 2016 onwards.  So the historic county name of Middlesex/Middx may disappear from our vocabulary and we will become known as postcodes only -  TW11 residents.

Essentially, what the plan is trying to achieve is an administrative change in a database field! 

Royal Mail has a database which is called an official post code address file.   Businesses and other companies have access to this database.  And for a fee, they use it to send out information to nearly 30 million households in the UK.  So, the database field for the county is to be removed.  For Teddington, it will just be Teddington and the post code.

What do Teddington people make of this change?  Is this a part of our heritage that we should hold onto.  Will we miss living in a county?  Or is it going to be faster for us to remove the county altogether? 

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