When Royal Mail announced in 2011 that a new E20 postcode was to be introduced for the Olympic Park, many were surprised. By rights E19 should've been next in line, but they skipped that and adopted the postcode district used by the fictional borough of Walford instead. E20 was to cover Westfield Stratford City and the Athletes Village, as well as the five new neighbourhoods created after the 2012 Games. It was carved out of the existing E15 postcode district, but there was never a map to show precisely where the boundary would be. Nine years later I've been wondering where it's finally ended up.
What made me wonder were these.
These street signs are in the northwestern part of the park around Here East. Oddly they've all been stickered over. Previously they all said E20, but now they say E15 instead.
Meanwhile a couple of the signs at the top of Waterden Road have had their postcodes covered over entirely, because those responsible couldn't work out what the appropriate nomenclature actually is.
The Olympic Park's street sign makers already have poor form, having slapped Newham's coat of arms on street signs that were actually in Hackney or Tower Hamlets. It seems they also made a similarly wrong assumption about postcodes, and have again resorted to stickers to put things right.
I tried investigating further.
Normally I check postcode district boundaries on Streetmap where they're shown as thin red lines. According to Streetmap the E20 boundary runs down the River Lea, not down Waterden Road, which suggests the whole of Here East ought to be in E20 not E15.
Then I tried checking on Google. Normally if you type a postcode district into Google it offers up a map showing the boundary, but for E20 mysteriously that doesn't work. I had to get creative by typing in E15 instead, and that threw up a ridiculously contorted boundary around E20 that can't be correct either.
Then I tried Doogal, a website which lists individual postcodes. It can generate a map showing where all the properties with E20 postcodes are - green pins active and red pins no longer in use...
...but that looked ridiculous too. Basically, never trust a computer to draw a line around some dots.
The E20 postcode district has three sectors - 1, 2 and 3.
E20 1 is around Westfield and the East Village, and is by far the most densely populated and the best defined. It runs as far east as the railway line between Stratford and Temple Mills, but not including the bus depot at Temple Mills because that's in E10. Each of the E20 maps I've looked at includes an odd indentation around Chobham Manor, but that's because these new homes haven't been built yet and I'd expect the gap to disappear once they start getting mail.
E20 2 covers the southern half of the park around the Olympic Stadium. Thus far there isn't very much here that needs a postcode, which may explain why currently only five exist. E20 2AA and E20 2AE are for two new schools, E20 2AD is for the Orbit, E20 2AQ for the Aquatics Centre and E20 2ST for the stadium. But other buildings immediately adjacent aren't included in the E20 envelope. The View Tube is at E15 2PJ, the Thames Water Recycling Centre at E3 2NW and the former Big Breakfastcottage, you may remember, at E3 2NN.
Finally there's E20 3 in the northern half of the park. Three of its handful of postcodes are for ex-Olympic venues - E20 3AB for the VeloPark, E20 3AD for the Hockey/Tennis Centre and E20 3HB for the Copper Box. Another (E20 3AF) is the construction base for the Sweetwater and Eastwick neighbourhoods, whose thousands of residents will one day enjoy E20 postcodes. Which just leaves Here East - the former Main Press Centre and International Broadcast Centre - and this is particularly baffling.
Across the two buildings at Here East, some of the businesses have an E20 3BS postcode and the rest have an E15 2GW postcode. BT Sport and Loughborough University are both Team E20, but Studio Wayne McGregor and Saint Espresso in the same building bat for E15. Here East's homepage opts for E15 2GW. Along Canalside the row of restaurants is bookended by Mother (E20) and Four Quarters East (E20), but with The Breakfast Club (E15) and Gotto Trattoria (E15) sandwiched inbetween. It's like the two postcodes were hurled out at random to businesses across the site.
Here East turns out to be an entirely schizophrenic neighbourhood, simultaneously in E20 and E15. No wonder the signmakers were confused.
If Royal Mail's original press release is correct and the five new Olympic Park neighbourhoods all end up with E20 postcodes, the district boundary should eventually become better defined. It could even spread south of the railway for the first time into Pudding Mill (where as yet, even eight years after the Games, nobody lives). But for now the E20 postcode district boundary remains an illogical wiggle around a meagre set of dots. I hope your daily exercise is throwing up psychogeographical peculiarities as intriguing as this.
