 Counties were an element of postal addressing in routine use until 1996, intended to avoid confusion between post towns, and are no longer required for the routing of the mail.The postal county did not match the boundaries of Middlesex because of the presence of the London postal district, which stretched into the county to include Tottenham, Willesden, Hornsey and Chiswick.Addresses in this area included "LONDON" which is the post town but any overlap with the then County of London was coincidental.