N postcode area
postcode area within the United Kingdom

The N (Northern) postcode area, also known as the London N postcode area, is the part of the London post town covering part of North London, England. It is a group of 25 postcode districts which covers around 17,429 live postcodes.
The area covers parts of the London Boroughs of Hackney, Islington, Camden, Barnet, Haringey and Enfield.
Postal administration
The postcode area originated in 1857 as the N district of London. In 1917 it was subdivided into 22 numbered districts. The Northern head district was designated as N1 and the rest of the numbering followed the alphabetical order of the other districts' main names. Most districts include local areas known by their own specific names (see table below). The official post town for all N postcodes is LONDON; district names do not form an essential part of postal addresses.
In 2010, a new N1C district was formed out of the far western part of the original N1 district, to accommodate redevelopment in Kings Cross Central. The N area also includes two non-geographic postcode districts: N1P for PO boxes in N1 or N1C; and N81 for ballot mailings to Electoral Reform Services in N8.
“N postcode area” enters the record as postcode area within the United Kingdom. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what postcode, area and within can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6956317. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1857, 1917 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “N postcode area” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.