Post by carlton43 on Apr 19, 2020 15:30:21 GMT
STRUCTURAL BACKGROUND
This is an ancient seat that has attracted and been represented by many illustrious names and it is a crying shame that the name has been changed from the pristine, the historic and the sensible 'Maidstone' to the present nonsense name. The boundaries leave something to be desired and the name is utterly witless.
This ancient market town and county town of Kent, lies at a convenient crossing point on the River Medway and was a tidal inland port, until the consrtuction of Allington Lock a short distance north and downstream. So it had an important bridge, moorage, coal staves and substantial important sawmills and timber merchants. The support services and central location on the prime routes of Medway Towns-Maidstone-Tonbridge, and Channel Ports-Ashford-Maidstone-London, led to courts, assizes, gaol, banks, auctioneers, market, corn exchange and other exchanges. Then Borough Council, County Council, Rural District Councils and a major Hospital. It was an important place.
It never quite grasped the importance of river improvements to Tonbridge and beyond, and cocked up the benefits of the railway age by being sniffy and losing the Mid Kent line, away to Tonbrige, instead of it being London-Sevenoaks-Maidstone-Ashford-Channel Ports. This had a profound effect and IMO stopped it being a major city. Instead it became that great rarity in England (common in France) a four-way end-on rail terminus! Trains from London-Bromley-Swanley-Otford-Maidstone; Maidstone-Ashford; Maidstone-Paddock Wood (on the Mid Kent main line they had lost out on); and Maidstone-Strood (Medway Towns)-London. The two London connections were electrified on the just pre-war third rail Southern improvements, but to different terminus stations in the town, far apart, ill-served by parking and not very central. The minor lines were not electrified to late in the 20thC and there was no integrated through running until that was done. It left Maidstone a relatively poorly served railway by-water.
The town thrived and prospered despite the lack of river improvements, inadequate rail provision and quite awful traffic problems of having the A20 major trunk road to the continent passing straight through the middle of the town. The prosperity lay with Alcohol (close to Kent hop gardens and superb water), Sweets, Fizzy Drinks, Food, Engineering, Motors, Timber/Furniture, Services and Administration. It was the site of Roots Group Motors, Tilling Stevens engineering, Automotive Pumps, Serck Radiators, Sharps Toffees, Haywards and Lyles soft drinks, Cherry Brandy and Gin distillaries, 5 Breweries including Fremlins, Style&Winch and Masons; Foster Clarkes (canned fruit and vegetables but once world famous for lemonade powder and sherbet powder, and acid drops). The superb water is over 3M years old from the deep Folkestone Greensand beneath the Chalk Ridges and very hard with a gorgeous taste, making superior ale.
All of the above trades left a mark on the town with a major division caused by Temperence versus alcohol which had Radicals (strong in the town and had been actual Radical MPs) and Conservatives pitched against Liberals over the matter. Even in the fizzy drinks the Haywards and the Lyles were active on different sides of politics. For quite a while this was a major matter in the town with considerable ramifications for jobs and profits for a town where it was not easy to get away from the smell of brewing, toffee, gin, cherries or sherbet. There were many fine posters and leaflets of that time funded by Methodists on one side and Brewers on the other. The railwaymen, brewery labourers and hop farm labourers were numerous and anti-Liberal
There have been many people of interest over the years since first enfranchisement in the mid-16thC and it demonstates a roll-call of many of the great political familes such as
Thomas Walsingham and Nicholas St. Ledger
Michael Sondes and members of the Fludd, Fane, Stanley, Twisden and Tufton families of Kent.
Then by 17thC Thomas Culpepper, and the Rider, Finch and Fairfax families.
In the 19thC we note a Whyndham Lewis, Alexander Hope and Benjamin Disraeli.
Two Radicals James Whatman and William Lee.
And latterly the Liberal Sir John Lubbock (ancestor of Eric victor of the Orpington by-election) and the promoter of the concept of Bank Holidays.
Between 1885-1918 there were Fiennes Cornwallis and a Viscount Castlereagh. Cornwallis held Linton Park just to the south of Maidstone on Coxheath Ridge overlooking the Weald; it is a massive white Georgian house of over 100-rooms built by the family as therapy for the shame of being in charge of the loss of the Americas.
Latterly the MPs included the architect (of the Liberty Building NY and hotels in Texas and the West) Alfred Bossom, of whom Churchill unkindly quipped 'He is neither one thing or another', who stood in at the wedding of Margaret Roberts to give her away to Denis Thatcher in 1953 near the start of her career. His son Clive was MP for Leominster. He was followed by John Julius Wells (who had ancestors as MPs) who once rode to the Commons on horseback, tethering it to the railings, in order to attend the Budget (in formal riding dress and top hat) where he distributed local apples and sat munching them through the Budget Speech. He was followed by the very odd Ann Widdicombe who was anti hunting and a late convert from High Anglicanism to RC and later from Idiosyncratic Toryism to Brexiteering.
Maidstone had an interesting Zoo run by a great character Sir Garrard Tyrwhitt-Drake at Cobtree Manor, opened for him by the circus owner Bertram Mills in the 30s and surviving through to 1959 with a steam tram access from public road to the entrance gate. The Friars at Allington is a delightful Carmelite monastery reformed in 1949 on the site of the establishment destroyed at the 1538 Dissolution, and one of the lesser known treasures of Kent. In the centre of the town there is a wonderful Carriage Museum in a very old building nearly opposite the Bishop's Palace being a former summer residence of the Bishop of Rochester. At the Art College both David Hockney and Ian Drury were teachers and Tracy Emin and Zandra Rhodes were pupils, and Quentin Crisp was a male model.
Maidstone was quite early into generating electricity and making gas with works in town on the Medway served mainly by river and with coke departing by river. Also early into and out of trams. I remember the rails seen in odd places and the Tram Shed at the southern terminus of Loose was long unused with our Scout Hut behind it for the oddly named Loose Swiss Troup being a rarity of a Troup actually raised abroad. Trams gave way to Trolley Buses that survived longer than most, into the second half 20thC. Loose village became a very large appendage to the south of the town but was originally formed by imports of men from the Low Countries (named after Loos in Belgium) who came to develop wine growing down the Loose Valley and the much later more to develop papermaking and paper mills with attendant waterway improvements. For some time Loose, Bockingford and Tovil (same valley leading into Medway valley) were pre-eminent in manufacture of high quality artists papers, and indeed 'Bockingford' is still a paper type much sought after for water colour use. Papermaking gravitated downsteam to Aylesford where Bowaters had huge mills, and then further downstream and off to Sittingbourne. Wine and paper has now gone from the town. Old Loose is a conservation area spanned by the 'Loose Viaduct' attributed to Thomas Telford and carries the Hastings road south. And nearby are a number of old Kent Ragstone quarries that supplied much of the stone for Westminster Abbey and some for the HOC.
The military long asscociated with Coxheath Ridge to the south, oft used as a marshalling and encampment area for forces at time of conflict or expected conflict. The West Kent Regiment was the local force and based in town near the river and served by Barracks Station on the Medway Valley line. And in sporting terms Maidstone was mainly Rugby Union and Cricket country with a major County Ground once at The Moat, which also hosted the annual County Show. County Show week and Cricket week being major items on the calendar. Maidstone Utd soccer club briefly blossomed into the Football League about the time Scarborough did and with the same dire result.
The comfortable villages to the south on part of the Weald tend to conservatism and those in the Cranbrook-Hawkhurst area are very up-market and wealthy but look more to Tunbridge Wells, and were once in the much larger Ashford seat. They are high end residential with a residual farming and a commuter aspect.
This has all resulted in a diminishing constituency size as the central population expanded and peripheral bits were stripped away. This paring down has not been successful and it is likely to lead to a 'dustbin' constituency with no central point, significant town or rationale being constructed for the 2021 Review. My own solution would be to take back in all the obvious components of a Greater Maidstone until the numbers are sufficient for two seats (Maidstone North and Maidstone South or East and West) by absorbing the estates and villages to the east from Faversham, and Aylesford, the Mallings and other peripherals that look to Maidstone and not really anywhere else.
In the modern age this seat has been conservative and close, a bit introverted and hard-edged Kentish. The Conservatives have had the benefit of well divided opposition until the threat of Labour collapsing altogether. It would need a total collapse of Labour coupled with heavy unpopularity of the Conservatives and a strong LD organization and candidate to even run this near to close. The Conservative share has stiffened from sound 40% range up to majoritarian 60% and will take some shifting in a non-volatile electorate of innate conservatism. In the doldrum of 1997 the Conservatives still had a margin of 17.9% that doubled in the Corbyn-surge year of 2017 to 34.2%, and now rests on a heavy 42.1% margin. Labour came closest in a 1945 'near' straight fight on the old boundaries at 45.7% vote with a 7.6% Conservative margin, after an amazing 18.7% Swing to them. By 1959 it was a Conservative margin of 21% on a straight fight, and in the Thatcher 1979 GE up to 29.3% because of a near perfect divide of 23.2% exactly for each of Liberal and Labour parties. The LD best year by far was 2010 when they came second with 36% and reduced the Conservative margin to 12%. In 2015 that margin was back to 21.4%, and in each case the Conservatives had the 'drag' of UKIP as well.
This is a seat that looks likely to keep returning Conservatives to the HOC because it is a balanced community in a pleasant interesting area near to the Medway Towns, easy commute to London and with a wide spread of well paid employment and many outlying village areas full of owner occupiers that can still outvote the total opposition in the town of Maidstone by themselves.
This is an ancient seat that has attracted and been represented by many illustrious names and it is a crying shame that the name has been changed from the pristine, the historic and the sensible 'Maidstone' to the present nonsense name. The boundaries leave something to be desired and the name is utterly witless.
This ancient market town and county town of Kent, lies at a convenient crossing point on the River Medway and was a tidal inland port, until the consrtuction of Allington Lock a short distance north and downstream. So it had an important bridge, moorage, coal staves and substantial important sawmills and timber merchants. The support services and central location on the prime routes of Medway Towns-Maidstone-Tonbridge, and Channel Ports-Ashford-Maidstone-London, led to courts, assizes, gaol, banks, auctioneers, market, corn exchange and other exchanges. Then Borough Council, County Council, Rural District Councils and a major Hospital. It was an important place.
It never quite grasped the importance of river improvements to Tonbridge and beyond, and cocked up the benefits of the railway age by being sniffy and losing the Mid Kent line, away to Tonbrige, instead of it being London-Sevenoaks-Maidstone-Ashford-Channel Ports. This had a profound effect and IMO stopped it being a major city. Instead it became that great rarity in England (common in France) a four-way end-on rail terminus! Trains from London-Bromley-Swanley-Otford-Maidstone; Maidstone-Ashford; Maidstone-Paddock Wood (on the Mid Kent main line they had lost out on); and Maidstone-Strood (Medway Towns)-London. The two London connections were electrified on the just pre-war third rail Southern improvements, but to different terminus stations in the town, far apart, ill-served by parking and not very central. The minor lines were not electrified to late in the 20thC and there was no integrated through running until that was done. It left Maidstone a relatively poorly served railway by-water.
The town thrived and prospered despite the lack of river improvements, inadequate rail provision and quite awful traffic problems of having the A20 major trunk road to the continent passing straight through the middle of the town. The prosperity lay with Alcohol (close to Kent hop gardens and superb water), Sweets, Fizzy Drinks, Food, Engineering, Motors, Timber/Furniture, Services and Administration. It was the site of Roots Group Motors, Tilling Stevens engineering, Automotive Pumps, Serck Radiators, Sharps Toffees, Haywards and Lyles soft drinks, Cherry Brandy and Gin distillaries, 5 Breweries including Fremlins, Style&Winch and Masons; Foster Clarkes (canned fruit and vegetables but once world famous for lemonade powder and sherbet powder, and acid drops). The superb water is over 3M years old from the deep Folkestone Greensand beneath the Chalk Ridges and very hard with a gorgeous taste, making superior ale.
All of the above trades left a mark on the town with a major division caused by Temperence versus alcohol which had Radicals (strong in the town and had been actual Radical MPs) and Conservatives pitched against Liberals over the matter. Even in the fizzy drinks the Haywards and the Lyles were active on different sides of politics. For quite a while this was a major matter in the town with considerable ramifications for jobs and profits for a town where it was not easy to get away from the smell of brewing, toffee, gin, cherries or sherbet. There were many fine posters and leaflets of that time funded by Methodists on one side and Brewers on the other. The railwaymen, brewery labourers and hop farm labourers were numerous and anti-Liberal
There have been many people of interest over the years since first enfranchisement in the mid-16thC and it demonstates a roll-call of many of the great political familes such as
Thomas Walsingham and Nicholas St. Ledger
Michael Sondes and members of the Fludd, Fane, Stanley, Twisden and Tufton families of Kent.
Then by 17thC Thomas Culpepper, and the Rider, Finch and Fairfax families.
In the 19thC we note a Whyndham Lewis, Alexander Hope and Benjamin Disraeli.
Two Radicals James Whatman and William Lee.
And latterly the Liberal Sir John Lubbock (ancestor of Eric victor of the Orpington by-election) and the promoter of the concept of Bank Holidays.
Between 1885-1918 there were Fiennes Cornwallis and a Viscount Castlereagh. Cornwallis held Linton Park just to the south of Maidstone on Coxheath Ridge overlooking the Weald; it is a massive white Georgian house of over 100-rooms built by the family as therapy for the shame of being in charge of the loss of the Americas.
Latterly the MPs included the architect (of the Liberty Building NY and hotels in Texas and the West) Alfred Bossom, of whom Churchill unkindly quipped 'He is neither one thing or another', who stood in at the wedding of Margaret Roberts to give her away to Denis Thatcher in 1953 near the start of her career. His son Clive was MP for Leominster. He was followed by John Julius Wells (who had ancestors as MPs) who once rode to the Commons on horseback, tethering it to the railings, in order to attend the Budget (in formal riding dress and top hat) where he distributed local apples and sat munching them through the Budget Speech. He was followed by the very odd Ann Widdicombe who was anti hunting and a late convert from High Anglicanism to RC and later from Idiosyncratic Toryism to Brexiteering.
Maidstone had an interesting Zoo run by a great character Sir Garrard Tyrwhitt-Drake at Cobtree Manor, opened for him by the circus owner Bertram Mills in the 30s and surviving through to 1959 with a steam tram access from public road to the entrance gate. The Friars at Allington is a delightful Carmelite monastery reformed in 1949 on the site of the establishment destroyed at the 1538 Dissolution, and one of the lesser known treasures of Kent. In the centre of the town there is a wonderful Carriage Museum in a very old building nearly opposite the Bishop's Palace being a former summer residence of the Bishop of Rochester. At the Art College both David Hockney and Ian Drury were teachers and Tracy Emin and Zandra Rhodes were pupils, and Quentin Crisp was a male model.
Maidstone was quite early into generating electricity and making gas with works in town on the Medway served mainly by river and with coke departing by river. Also early into and out of trams. I remember the rails seen in odd places and the Tram Shed at the southern terminus of Loose was long unused with our Scout Hut behind it for the oddly named Loose Swiss Troup being a rarity of a Troup actually raised abroad. Trams gave way to Trolley Buses that survived longer than most, into the second half 20thC. Loose village became a very large appendage to the south of the town but was originally formed by imports of men from the Low Countries (named after Loos in Belgium) who came to develop wine growing down the Loose Valley and the much later more to develop papermaking and paper mills with attendant waterway improvements. For some time Loose, Bockingford and Tovil (same valley leading into Medway valley) were pre-eminent in manufacture of high quality artists papers, and indeed 'Bockingford' is still a paper type much sought after for water colour use. Papermaking gravitated downsteam to Aylesford where Bowaters had huge mills, and then further downstream and off to Sittingbourne. Wine and paper has now gone from the town. Old Loose is a conservation area spanned by the 'Loose Viaduct' attributed to Thomas Telford and carries the Hastings road south. And nearby are a number of old Kent Ragstone quarries that supplied much of the stone for Westminster Abbey and some for the HOC.
The military long asscociated with Coxheath Ridge to the south, oft used as a marshalling and encampment area for forces at time of conflict or expected conflict. The West Kent Regiment was the local force and based in town near the river and served by Barracks Station on the Medway Valley line. And in sporting terms Maidstone was mainly Rugby Union and Cricket country with a major County Ground once at The Moat, which also hosted the annual County Show. County Show week and Cricket week being major items on the calendar. Maidstone Utd soccer club briefly blossomed into the Football League about the time Scarborough did and with the same dire result.
The comfortable villages to the south on part of the Weald tend to conservatism and those in the Cranbrook-Hawkhurst area are very up-market and wealthy but look more to Tunbridge Wells, and were once in the much larger Ashford seat. They are high end residential with a residual farming and a commuter aspect.
This has all resulted in a diminishing constituency size as the central population expanded and peripheral bits were stripped away. This paring down has not been successful and it is likely to lead to a 'dustbin' constituency with no central point, significant town or rationale being constructed for the 2021 Review. My own solution would be to take back in all the obvious components of a Greater Maidstone until the numbers are sufficient for two seats (Maidstone North and Maidstone South or East and West) by absorbing the estates and villages to the east from Faversham, and Aylesford, the Mallings and other peripherals that look to Maidstone and not really anywhere else.
In the modern age this seat has been conservative and close, a bit introverted and hard-edged Kentish. The Conservatives have had the benefit of well divided opposition until the threat of Labour collapsing altogether. It would need a total collapse of Labour coupled with heavy unpopularity of the Conservatives and a strong LD organization and candidate to even run this near to close. The Conservative share has stiffened from sound 40% range up to majoritarian 60% and will take some shifting in a non-volatile electorate of innate conservatism. In the doldrum of 1997 the Conservatives still had a margin of 17.9% that doubled in the Corbyn-surge year of 2017 to 34.2%, and now rests on a heavy 42.1% margin. Labour came closest in a 1945 'near' straight fight on the old boundaries at 45.7% vote with a 7.6% Conservative margin, after an amazing 18.7% Swing to them. By 1959 it was a Conservative margin of 21% on a straight fight, and in the Thatcher 1979 GE up to 29.3% because of a near perfect divide of 23.2% exactly for each of Liberal and Labour parties. The LD best year by far was 2010 when they came second with 36% and reduced the Conservative margin to 12%. In 2015 that margin was back to 21.4%, and in each case the Conservatives had the 'drag' of UKIP as well.
This is a seat that looks likely to keep returning Conservatives to the HOC because it is a balanced community in a pleasant interesting area near to the Medway Towns, easy commute to London and with a wide spread of well paid employment and many outlying village areas full of owner occupiers that can still outvote the total opposition in the town of Maidstone by themselves.
