The Reason that We Favour Districts over Towns in Our Listings

Hello there,

Data quality is important and this is reflected in our website. We have not succeeded in finding an adequate service to validate the address of a public house that uses the actual town where the pub is located. There are validation services that validate to postal town. However, these are inadequate, as the postal town does not always reflect the actual town. In addition, such services roll-up nearby villages, which are outside the town (postal or otherwise), as being located in that town. For example, Whitburn is a village outside of the town of Sunderland. So, it is not actually in Sunderland. Nonetheless, postal town validators categorize this village as being in the postal town of Sunderland. To say, however, that Whitburn is in Sunderland would be incorrect. Whitburn is not an isolated example. There are hundreds of examples we could mention. Therefore, the postal town is not a category that we would care to use. For this reason, we validate against services that use local Authority instead. This ensures more accurate information.

Thanks in advance for the interest.

Kindest,

The Haunted Hostelries Team