We counted the number of entries in the directory for each lettered postal district. Here are the results in alphabetical order of the town after which the district is named. Those not familiar with UK postcodes should be aware that these districts may extend far outside the named town, especially in rural areas.
The map spreads the dots (1 per hit) around the towns, but there is no guarantee that every dot is in the correct postal district. It's also very likely that the dots should be more closely packed around towns like Southampton and Portsmouth.
The concentration of the surname in the S and SW of England is very obvious. The lack of hits very close to Bittescombe is not too surprising - it's a rural area. The biggest concentrations of the name are in the kind of large towns to which people might have moved as Britain became an urban and industrial nation, rather than a rural and agricultural one.
| Town | Postal Code | Number found | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bath | BA | 8 |
|
| Bolton | BL | 2 | |
| Bournemouth | BH | 4 | |
| Bristol | BS | 7 | |
| Bromley | BR | 1 | |
| Brighton | BN | 4 | |
| Cardiff | CF | 5 | |
| Chelmsford | CM | 1 | |
| Colchester | CO | 1 | |
| Coventry | CV | 4 | |
| Croydon | CR | 1 | |
| Dartford | DA | 4 | |
| Derby | DE | 4 | |
| Dorchester | DT | 7 | |
| Dudley | DY | 2 | |
| Durham | DH | 2 | |
| Enfield | EN | 1 | |
| Exeter | EX | 3 | |
| Gloucester | GL | 8 | |
| Guildford | GU | 4 | |
| Hemel Hempstead | HP | 1 | |
| Hereford | HR | 1 | |
| Huddersfield | HD | 1 | |
| Ipswich | IP | 1 | |
| Kingston | KT | 1 | |
| Liverpool | L | 4 | |
| London (NW) | NW | 2 | |
| London (SW) | SW | 2 | |
| London (W) | W | 1 | |
| Luton | LU | 2 | |
| Milton keynes | MK | 2 | |
| Newcastle upon Tyne | NE | 3 | |
| Newport (Gwent) | NP | 3 | |
| Norwich | NR | 1 | |
| Oxford | OX | 2 | |
| Paisley | PA | 1 | |
| Peterborough | PE | 2 | |
| Plymouth | PL | 1 | |
| Portsmouth | PO | 16 | |
| Preston | PR | 3 | |
| Reading | RG | 2 | |
| Redhill | RH | 4 | |
| Romford | RM | 1 | |
| Royal Tunbridge Wells | TN | 1 | |
| St Albans | AL | 1 | |
| Salisbury | SP | 3 | |
| Slough | SL | 2 | |
| Southampton | SO | 40 | |
| Stevenage | SG | 1 | |
| Taunton | TA | 2 | |
| Truro | TR | 1 | |
| Twickenham | TW | 3 | |
| Warrington | WA | 1 | |
| Wolverhampton | WV | 1 | |
| Worcester | WR | 1 |
Out of idle curiosity, I searched the web for names similar to Biddlecombe, with the following results. Names which were not found at all are not listed.
| Surname | Average no. of hits |
I chose five search sites (AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek,
Lycos, Yahoo) and just searched for each surname in turn, using
the default options. For each engine, the number of hits for 'Biddlecombe'
was normalised to 100, and other results multiplied by the same number.
The results shown are averages of these adjusted numbers of hits. If that explanation didn't help, the results mean, for instance, that I found about 4 times as many hits for Biddlecombe as I did for Biddlecom. |
|---|---|---|
| Biddlecombe | 100 | |
| Biddlecome | 46 | |
| Biddlecomb | 31 | |
| Biddlecom | 26 | |
| Biddlescomb | 4 | |
| Biddlescombe | 2 |
Editor: Peter Biddlecombe
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