Those living outside the UK and writing to a British friend might wonder for a moment about the differences between British postcodes (that’s zip code to those of you in the USA) and the systems in their own countries. British postcodes are unusual in being a mix of letters and numbers and in having initial letters that directly relate to the name of the nearest large town. Compare this to US zip codes which are purely a sequence of numbers.

A UK postcode has two parts, separated by a space. To the left of the space comes one or two letters and a one or two digit number. The letters are called the postal area (roughly mapping to the nearest large town or city) and the number indicates a postal district (roughly mapping to a sorting office).

There are 124 postal areas in the UK. Most are represented by a pair of letters which are part of the name of the large town or city they correspond with, for example GL for Gloucester or DD for Dundee. A few large cities have a one-letter postal area: B for Birmingham, G for Glasgow, L for Liverpool, M for Manchester and S for Sheffield, and these cities therefore have shorter postcodes than most.

London is another exception. You might have spotted that L stands for Liverpool, not London. London is divided into 8 postal areas radiating like spokes of a wheel and named after points of the compass (with C for centre): N, NW, SW, SE, W, WC, E and EC (north, northwest, southwest, southeast, west, west central, east and east central). The reason for this is historic: London is where a system of postcodes was first implemented, way back in 1857! And when a national system was devised, rather than renumber the London codes the London system was simply integrated into the national system with a few tweaks.

There are a few postal area names that don’t at first glance seem to correspond to town or city names. ZE is Lerwick, the capital of the Shetland Islands in Scotland, but is actually from the old name for the isles, Zetland. The FY postal area is Blackpool on the list, though the initials actually come from Flyde, the peninsula on which Blackpool sits. (I guess with BL taken by Bolton they couldn’t think what else to use.) And there are a handful more seemingly strange ones.

There is one postal area that doesn’t relate at all to a geographic location: BX. It tends to be used by companies or organisations who receive so much main they would overwhelm their local sorting office and who therefore have theirs separated out at an earlier stage of the main delivery system. One example is the VAT Office (VAT being the UK sales tax) at BX5 5AT.

After the area letter or letters comes the district number. This maps to a part of a large city or town or a whole small town, or a large rural district. It’s sometimes called the “post town.” Usually, the smaller the number the closer it is to the large town or city the postal area is named after. For example HR1 is the central Hereford city district whilst HR8 is the small market town of Ledbury, which is 15 miles to the east of Hereford.

Again there are exceptions! Aberdeen uses only two-digit district codes after the re-numbering several years ago, with AB10 to AB25 covering the city itself and higher numbers the smaller towns and rural areas surrounding it. And there are a few London postcodes where there is another letter after the district numbers, simply because they ran out of numbers!

After the area letters and district numbers comes a space. This is the source of much irritation in the computer age, as some applications and websites require you to enter the space and others will throw an error if you do! Fortunately more and more sites are doing it correctly nowadays and accepting the space, or even both.

After the space is a single number, denoting the postal sector, and two letters denoting the postal unit. Together these are called the “inward code” are used by the local sorting office the mail arrives at to sort them into postmen’s rounds. The inward code can narrow down an address to quite a small area. For example my home street has about 100 households and 4 postcodes, one for low-numbered odd numbers, one for low-numbered even numbers, one for high-numbered odd numbers and the final for high-numbered even numbers. Since odd and even numbers are on opposite sides of the street, the postman knows from the postcode which side of the road the address is on and which end of the street it is nearest to! At least in the case of my street anyway – other streets may have more or fewer codes and might not be so logical.

Let’s look at an example. I’m not daft enough going to give you my own postcode, so here’s one to a tourist attraction which publishes their postcode openly on their website. Dunnottar castle is a spectacular medieval castle perched on a rock jutting out into the North Sea near Stonehaven in Scotland. Those of you who have Windows 7 on your PC and who have selected the UK places desktop will have seen it as one of the desktop images. If you haven’t, then here is a link to an article about the place, with some photos.

http://trifter.com/europe/dunnottar-the-castle-without-walls/

Anyway, here is the postcode:

AB39 2TL

AB stands for Aberdeen, the nearest city. The castle is actually closer to the town of Stonehaven, but that town doesn’t warrant a postal area of its own. Stonehaven is actually classed as a postal down, a district, and has the AB39 code. The 2 narrows it down to either the southern part of Stonehaven or the villages to the immediate south such as Kirktown and Catterline, and the TL pinpoints it to the castle!

Now if you’ve been following me so far, wanting to know what the postcode is for Santa, well here’s the answer: SAN TA1. Honestly!

We sigh out of relief, and are glad to be safe at home. But there are places where the dead walk, where the cursed vent their rage still. There are castles where terrible events have shattered the walls between this world and the next. In such locations the dead are restless and troubled; thus they remain trapped in purgatory. This is a brief look at three such locations in the rain swept land of Scotland, but bear in mind that there are thousands of castles, all of them with their own dark stories.

Edinburgh Castle

The most famous and most touristic of the Scottish castles has more than its fair share of ghosts. The castle sits atop a basalt plug left by a dying volcano. Millenia ago during the last ice age this rock resisted the advance of great glaciers, which crashed into it and were forced around it carving out the valleys on either side of castle rock. This affords Edinburgh castle the perfect defensive position, and it has been used for this purpose since ancient times. Beneath the castle itself lies an interconnected web work of countless tunnels and passages. Many are known and many more kept secret. It is rumored that all of Edinburgh is accessible through this most secret network.

A century ago, when the passages were first stumbled upon, a piper was lowered down into the tunnels and sent to explore them. With the simple instruction to keep playing his bag pipes so those above could chart his progress, the brave piper descended into the depths. For a while the haunting music of the pipes drifted up to those at the entrance. Suddenly the music stopped and a lonely silence descended upon the corridors.

Search parties were swiftly organized and sent down into the tunnels, but the lonely piper was never seen nor heard of since. Often, his drifting music can be heard in the castle as the lonely piper walks for ever more, trapped in the ancient catacombs beneath Edinburgh.

To travel further back into the ages past, we find another occupant who has haunted this castle since the 17th century. The headless ghost of a young boy hammering on his drums was spotted before Oliver Cromwell’s attack on September 3rd 1650. The headless boy has been seen since, always before an attack of some sort upon the capital.

Aside from the aforementioned notables, countless other ghosts haunt the castle (even ghosts of dogs). Having had such well used dungeons, where thousands lost their lives, has made Edinburgh castle one of the most unpleasant places for the living to stay. The feeling of great distress seeps out of the walls and into the souls of those who stay there. No doubt those who faded away in the dank dungeon have marked the place, their horror and despair carved in the rocks and bricks, drifting like a chill wind in the corridors. Think of these poor souls who now wander the darkness forever, trapped in the eternal nightmare caused by their violent deaths, and by the trauma of their captivity. Even those who have no knowledge of Edinburgh Castle’s grim past, soon flee in terror if left alone during the night, such is the feeling of despair that hangs saturated in the air beneath the castle.

Dunnottar Castle

With the infamous reputation as being the most haunted castle in all of Scotland, Dunnottar Castle naturally has a long and bloody history. The site was in use before even history began and has survived despite being sieged countless times and often destroyed only to be rebuilt later. Dark shadows walk the crumbling parapets, while the air takes on an icy edge. Those brave enough to enter the castle at night will hear the cries of the tormented souls drift in from the direction of the cliffs, or feel the shudder run up their spine as ghostly whispers slice at the silence. Perhaps it is no surprise that the historian Beattie of Caledonia, wrote about the place;
“To him who is familiar with history, Dunnottar speaks with an audible voice. Every cave has a record, every turret has a tongue…”

Its patchwork history began when St. Ninian built a church within the castle grounds. Come the year 681 the castle was besieged. Two centuries later in 900 the castle fell to the Vikings. In 934, the King Aethelstan of Wessex rampaged through Scotland. Thoughout the site’s stormy history of this period, various churches were thrown up to be just as quickly destroyed. Still the death toll rose.

By the end of the 13th century, the castle had grown into a small village; with a chapel, barracks, stables, and a graveyard. Barely three years before the turn of the century, in 1297, William Wallace sacked the castle and slaughtered its occupants – burning them alive in the church. The castle changed hands frequently as prior owners were driven off or slaughtered. An example of a typical episode occurred in 1685 when anti-Royalist Covenanters were imprisoned along with their families in the black depths. 160 people, women and children included, were tortured and subjected to slow agonizing deaths from malnourishment and brutality. That cliff of sorrows gained its specters when a few of these poor families attempted to escape down it. Dunnottar, even in this modern and enlightened age of ours, is still a terrifying place best visited during the day lest the specters of the night claim yet more victims.

Glamis Castle

One of the most stunningly beautiful castles to ever have been built in Scotland, Glamis Castle rises up like a Walt Disney fairytale castle, with its myriad of turrets rising up and piercing the sky. Since the 14th century its occupants have been extending it, so that it is a number of structures layered around each other, no doubt concealing a myriad of hidden spaces. The last such modification turned it into a grand baronial mansion.

It is the family home of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne and was the childhood home of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (the Queen Mum). Due to its royal history it is featured on the back of the Royal Bank of Scotland £10 note.

The castle is located near Angus, and its estate covers 14,000 acres (21.8m2) of the valley of Strathmore. The castle’s history is steeped in myth and legend, and it has a grim past as if to make up for its beauty. It has monsters, and demons, vampires, and the Devil himself who turned up to play cards with the unfortunate Earl Beardie. As if it didn’t have enough going for it, the castle is also believed by many to be the setting of Shakespeare’s cursed play; Macbeth.

A Grey Lady, haunts the family chapel, and it is suspected that she is the spirit of Lady Janet Douglas, who walks the corridors for all eternity, unable to find peace after her horrific death in 1537. She was burned at the stake as a witch on Castle Hill in Edinburgh having been charged of a plot kill the King (with poison). She has been spotted on a number of occasions, and may have been the inspiration behind J.K. Rowling’s Grey Lady in the Harry Potter series.

Another lady haunts the castle, and her ghost has been seen looking out of a barred window into the grounds and running about in the park, making sure that terrified witnesses get a good look at her mutilated face before disappearing off into the castle. She has no tongue, a clue to the horrors she suffered in her life, but history tells us nothing of who she was nor why she haunts the castle.

Last but not least is the infamous Earl Beardie, also known in his day as Alexander, Earl Crawford. It is said that he was staying in the castle one night as a guest, when in a drunken state he demanded a game of cards with his hosts, who flatly refused. Earl Beardie flew into an inconsolable rage, and declared that he would even play cards with the Devil himself to satisfy his thirst for the game. This had no sooner been uttered from his lips when a stranger hammered at the door, and inquired after Lord Beardie, asking if he fancied a game of cards. They holed themselves in one of the rooms, and began to play cards. No one knows how that game finished for screams and curses and yelling and cries of anguish issued forth, interspersed with the sound of rattling dice, and then silence as the stranger and the Earl disappeared. They say it was the Devil himself, and he took the Earl’s soul with him. Others say you can hear them playing still, in a secret room through which no door can reach.

Those who are not familiar with Scotland might be surprised by the sheer number of castles, but there are thousands of them, some crumbling ruins, some converted into flats and mansions, hotels and golf clubs. All have their own history, their own stories, none of them have escaped unscathed or unbloodied. All have had blood spilled in their halls, all have ghosts, all have hidden secrets. Remember and visit some of them next time you find yourself in bonny Scotland.