That time format "15 hours 32" definitely sounds as though it's an English translation from a Continental system. Ranger, don't you use a similar form in German? (e.g. "funfzehn Uhr zwei-und-dreizig.")
The U.K. postal codes were introduced about 30 years ago. Like Ireland, we already had "zones" for the larger cities, e.g. Liverpool 4, Birmingham 2. These were incorporated in to the new codes, e.g. L4 xxx, B2 xxx.
London had multiple codes indicating the region of the city: N, NW, W, E, SW, SE, WC, EC (the last two being West Central and East Central). Again, these designations were kept and extra digits added in the new system. Note that NE and S were never used; the new system uses these codes for places very much removed from London (Newcastle and Sheffield!).
By the way, the term "ZIP" code in America comes from Zone Improvment Plan, which similarly incorporated big city zones into the new numbers, e.g. New York 17, became 10017.
Writing the house number after the street name seems to be quite a common central/eastern European thing. I've seen it that way on Russian and other former Iron-Curtain countries as well.
