This is a lengthy transfer of the highlights from a post originally posted by @sheymouse on the old Software Testing Club. The intention of the post was to compile a list of fun postcodes (from any country) which can be used when testing, and give a little spark of fun or interest. If Iâve mis-tagged or missed anyone, I apologise!
Original Thread
@sheymouse started off with some postcodes he uses regularly:
- W1J 7NT - 149 Piccadilly, London. House of the Duke of Wellington
- DE12 8HJ - 17 Burton Road Coton in the Elms, Derbyshire. The Black Horse Pub, possibly the furthest pub from the sea in the UK.
- SW1A 1AA - Buckingham Palace
Stephen Hill added
One of the most common mistakes people make is to assume a Postcode covers at most one street: HD7 5UZ covers 7.
- HD7 5UZ - covers 7 streets; the most in the UK
- CH5 3QW - the longest addresses in terms of numbers of elements
- Anywhere in SA63 - the Post Town is CLARBESTON ROAD
- W2 1JB - When all the premises get expanded youâll get the longest âpremise stringâ in the UK
- PL7 1RF - Devon and Cornwall Police vs Devon and Cornwall Constabulary
- GIR 0AA - special case Postcode for Girobank at Bootle"
You will find that âtowns and large villagesâ are classed as Localities; Jersey; the Isle of Man and Guernsey are the Post Towns.
- JE3 1EP
- JE2 3XP
- IM9 4EB
- IM9 4AJ has no street
- GY7 9YH
There is the strange case of the PO Box with no other identifying info at GY1 3EW
29, IV27 4EG is a horror story address for those of you interested in such things. The formatted postal address is as follows:
29 LAIRG
IV27 4EG
This arises from an anomaly in the way the data was originally entered on Royal Mailâs database because all the other premises at that Postcode have a building name of, for example, â15 Lochsideâ. I suspect that âLochsideâ is actually a street but it is not on the data as such. It therefore follows that the âcorrectâ data for this record should be a building name of â29 Lochsideâ giving an address of:
29 Lochside
LAIRG
IV27 4EG.
I noticed that someone reference PL7 1RF above. There is another interesting point about that Postcode: there are two premises there for the Devon and Cornwall police. In the UK âConstabularyâ is another word for âPolice forceâ. Therefore âDevon and Cornwall Police, PL7 1RFâ is pretty ambiguous as it could refer to either of the following:
Devon & Cornwall Constabulary
4 Valley Road
PLYMOUTH
PL7 1RF
or
Devon & Cornwall Police
8-10 Valley Road
PLYMOUTH
PL7 1RF"
@lcrandall_98 posted
I tend to use the following quite a bit:
- 68873 - St. Paul, Nebraska, population 1000 peeps give or take, 1500 if you include cows. My hometown!
- 10001/10002/etc. - Manhattan, New York
- Any of the Denver area zip codes (my current hometown!)
- 92803 - Disneyland, Anaheim, California. The happiest place on earth!"
Phil Kirkham shared one youâd think wasnât real âHell, MI 48169â
@katepaulk added:
- For US postcodes, any that start with 0 (because thereâs a tendency to forget that these are valid)
- 01111 (Hampden, Massachusetts)
- Iâll also do the 5+4 format that identifies something to the house/PO box
- 01111-1111 (I donât actually know what house this is)
- For anything that says itâs international, Iâll use as many different formats as I know of - Canadian postal codes, UK ones, Australian, NZ⌠As well as the home country of the site.
Emma P
- PL7 1RF â Address list includes â&â â(â â-â
- IM94AJ - no street
- GY1 3EW â po box
- CH5 3QW â high number of address elements
@ash_winter
My previous life was as a Postcode Data Analyst so have a frightening affinity with Postcodes.
PAF is built from the posties on the ground observations, making it great test data as it contains all the weirdness of the real world, vanity addresses (âWelcome to Winter Towersâ) businesses opening, closing, moving, growing, shrinking!
EC and WC (WC1A 1AA) postcodes often freak a lot of systems, as do single char areas (M, S etc).
Throw your non geographics in there. Data wise (their cartesian coordinates) they are locationally matched to the next level of Postcode above. So:
M1 1AA
would try and match to:
M1 1A
then
M1 1, M1, and M.
If it had no sub sector, sector, or district corresponding it would match coordinates to the Area!
I could go on, its all flooding back.
Donât get me started on digitising the Postcode boundaries of the coast of Scotland. Or individually fixing AddressPoint. shudders
New Thread
This post was from 2012 originally. For a new thread, Iâd ask of you: Do you have any that youâd add to the list? Are all of the above still good ones to use?
Ireland have since got Eircodes which are Irelands attempt at postcodes. Iâve heard these have caused mayhem. Has anyone had to test these yet? Are there any particularly sticky ones?