Stations outside Greater London

Beacuse Essex CC paid TfL some money.

There are plenty of places like (Uxbridge 01895) and Molesey (020 8979) whose telephone codes suggest they are the wrong side of the GLA boundary - indeed the London area postodes don't cover the whole of Greater London. This is partly for technical reasons: both systems were developed by the GPO for its own purposes, and the areas served by indidual telephone exchanges and postal sorting offices don't necessarily fit political boundaries. It is also partly historical - both systems have origins older than the existence of Greater London, so it would be unreasonable to expect them to have guessed where its boundaries would lie! (The London Postal Area is a reasonably close fit to the old London County Council)

Other historic definitions of London include the Metropolitan Police District (defined in the 1829 legislation which created it as comprising "those civil parishes [...] of which any part is within twelve miles (later extended to fifteen miles) from Charing Cross" - after many changes, the area was finally redefined to exactly match Greater London as recently as 1999.

The area served by London Transport "green" buses extended deep into the Home Counties.

A few areas on the edges of London are a part of Greater London but have a non 020 number. New Addington & Orpington sprang to mind (both also have good transport connections as well). Petts Wood firmly in zone 5 has a non 020 telephone number.

Probably as a result of many outlaying towns not being a part of Greater London when the telephone system started going to direct dial and probably due to the uneven nature of the travel card zones and the funding/ politics involved.

In contrast Loughton, one of the Central Line's Essex locales, has 020 8 phone numbers. There is a small map at www.scot.scotshome.com/geography/londondiallingcodes.htm that overlays the London telephone area and Greater London.

An interesting subject and far too complex and somewhat OT for this thread but as far as the telephone areas are concerned they generally developed as a result of (a) where people lived (b) how many of those people wanted a telephone service. London was slightly different in that it grew from the city outwards. For instance in the early days of telephony Dalston exchange covered all the way out to Tottenham Seven Sisters Road and Tottenham exchange covered as far outside London as Nazeing. This was before the turn of the 20th century in the 1890s. It was only in the late 1950s that Edmonton got its own exchange, prior to that Waltham Cross and Hoddesdon exchanges had been built. Basically telephone exchanges were built much as the early tubes were following main roads as far as possible to keep down the costs of cabling which in the beginning was all overhead open wires from the exchanges' roof standards to the subscribers. The exchanges I mention were more or less all on the route of the old A10 and so it was across London to a large extent, exchanges predominantly built along a convenient route and that facilitated underground duct routes linking all the exchanges by junction circuits when overhead cabling became impossible to sustain due to growth of the network in the capital. many of the places mentioned in the thread were simply not in London while utilities and services developed, thus there is little or no congruence between postal, telephone, water board, electricity board, gas board and other authority geographical areas. In the case of telephony the map was complicated by charging policy which in the days of operator controlled calls were in rings emanating from the centre of London. As far as numbering goes in the early days of automatic telephone exchanges all were of the non-director type where the dialled digits routed the call directly but in the late 1920s the expansion of the London network forced the GPO to think again as the cost of directly interconnecting every London telephone exchange to every other London telephone exchange became prohibitive in terms of the line plant and equipment required. Thus the director system was invented whereby each exchange in the London area charge group had a three letter code TOTtenham, EDMonton, MOUntview, STAmford Hill etc which was translated by a register called a 'Director' into 1 to 6 routing digits to route the call directly, or indirectly via tandem exchanges (including Holborn/Museum that was built in a tube tunnel) serving the London charge group in sections, as appropriate. The London charge group thus became known as the London Director Area, outside this area were the adjacent charge groups which still had non-director exchanges but calls to which from London were still charged at local rate. When STD began in 1959 it was based upon charge groups across the country and London was a special case becoming 01, the other five conurbations having the director system were 021 Birmingham, 031 Edinburgh, 041 Glasgow, 051 Liverpool and 061 Manchester while the rest of the country had exchanges grouped together as charge groups, each with a main exchange known as a group switching centre acting as the tandem, incoming and outgoing trunk unit for the group. For instance Slough 0753 which also was the GSC for the 0281 group, Farnham Common etc. The LDA initially had its own dedicated incoming and outgoing trunk units such as Tower, Rampart, Bastion, Fortress, Citadel, Faraday, Varley, Cavendish (+ two more whose names I have forgotten) and Toll A and Toll B exchanges which communicated with the nationwide GSCs via the trunk network. Those exchanges on the edge of London in adjacent charge groups were treated as director exchanges for routing purposes from the LDA and so two two letters of the exchange name + the first digit of the 5 digit number formed a three digit code i.e. Uxbridge was UX5 (895) and Waltham crosS was WS2 (972) while SLough was SL3 (753), hence these codes could never be given to LDA exchanges and that's one of the reasons why London numbering moved from 01 to 071/081 then the 'S' digit (1) added to most other codes such that LDA became 0171/0181, Uxbridge 0895 became 01895 etc. and then LDA moved to 020 to free up national numbers.

If I bored anyone I apologise but I think it was worth a very quick precis of what is a massive subject close to my heart.

Fundamentally, ever since areas outside the strictly defined boundaries of the City of London came to be described as 'London' in the 16th Century (if not earlier), there has never been a standard definition of 'London' (or 'Greater London' or 'the Metropolis') - different areas have been so defined by different bodies for different purposes at different times, often for practical convenience (e.g. by the Post Office for both Mail and Telephone purposes), and while some efforts have been made to align them, practical considerations have often restricted these.

While I can't vouch for the accuracy, I'm sure our original number was (01) 557 which doesn't appear on the list. Mind you, that's 40 or so years in the past, and I'd have been quite young at the time.

Route 175, some journeys ran through to Ongar although most that ran beyond Chase Cross turned around at Stapleford Abbots (later at Passingford Bridge when the roundabout was built there). The fundamental problem with the service was the need for positioning journeys from North Street Garage. I believe that the killer was when county councils were forced to put school bus services out to tender which lost the route its subsidy for carrying school kids to Ongar on the outbound morning journey. The route continued for a while on Romford market days only.
Red buses run again to Passingford Bridge but there is no service onwards to Ongar or Abridge any more.

Romford postal addresses and phone numbers extend beyond the current GLA boundary.

Back to the original topic, I believe that the Essex stations are in the "standard" zones through a financial arrangement with Essex County Council.

KEAts (KEA=532); is that following the same naming convention as BYRon exchange in South Harrow? My grandparents telephone number when my mum grew up was Byron xxxx, they lived in Whitton Avenue East at the time.

The emergency number displayed on the gas meter at home begins with "Slough (0753)". Often wondered why one of the many readers that doubtless have seen it since have not mentioned/changed it.

Is the entire 01895 area within the current Greater London?

railtechnician I was in Brockley at the time, my Nan was a supervisor at New Cross exchange - Whether it was just her story or not I don't know, but she always said our line was special because she made it and she routed all calls to and from it. I spend many a happy day sat in the exchange with headphones on listening to and watching all the girls working.

Anyhow, I digress...

As this appears to have gone way off-topic, I thought I'd just add that all London Underground stations (including deepest darkest Epping and Chesham!) have London direct-dial 'phone numbers... either starting in 020 7918 or 020 7027 (both are LU/TfL exchanges).

The 020 telephone numbers and the London postal districts follow roughly the old LCC area, there are exceptions however. The telephones outside the 020 area were often split into smaller units based on the exchange, for example the present 0708 Romford number covers not only the old Romford exchange but the former Hornchurch and Ingrebourne exchanges. There may have been another exchange included in the area but it was a long time ago that the changes were made (but after STD).

A bit before my time I'm afraid! I had tried to look up the history of the 465 on Ian's site but unfortunately he hasn't got that far down the list yet. I did find this though: KATA website

1991 route 465 replaced part of the withdrawn 714 Green Line, operating Horsham-Kingston (with peak extension to Ham (replacing the X71), operated by London&Country for LT.
1996 peak extensions withdrawn
1997 both termini changed: now runs Dorking to Teddington.
1999-2001 some journeys serve Effingham instead of Dorking
2002 extended to Fulwell
2006 Fulwell - Kingston replaced by 481.

You have missed 020 7308 (Canary Wharf) and the JLE was 020 7599 while it was under construction, I'm not sure if the numbers were kept or replaced.

I think I ought to apologise to the OP, the mods and all as looking back over this thread I appear to have hijacked it, it was certainly not my intention.