Post by John Chanin on Apr 30, 2020 11:18:13 GMT
Kenilworth is a prosperous small town that sits between Coventry and Leamington, and accounts for nearly a third of this seat. It has a brand new railway station linking it to those towns, and is within commuting range of Birmingham. North of the clocktower at the head of the high street on the Warwick Road is Abbey Fields, with its ruined abbey and memorial to the Oxford train disaster of 1874 in the associated parish church. North again is the old High Street, with its fine buildings, and its thatched houses at the south end, before reaching the red sandstone walls of Kenilworth Castle. This was an important mediaeval fortress, home to John of Gaunt and later Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who courted Queen Elizabeth here, but it was ruined during the Civil War as a royalist stronghold. Another quarter of the seat is the rural north of Warwick District. To the west are commuter villages like Hatton at the bottom, and Lapworth at the top, of the large flight of locks that take the Grand Union canal up from the Avon valley onto the central plain of the Midlands. To the east is Stoneleigh, with its National Agricultural Centre, and another rather better preserved abbey. Cubbington and Radford Semele are satellites of Leamington. In the far north, on the edge of Coventry is Warwick University, which straddles the boundary, and there is some student accommodation on the Warwick side. Kenilworth is a favoured location for staff at the university and the adjacent business park, but is too expensive for the students. Coventry airport, only used for freight, also sits just within Warwick District.
The smaller half of the seat comes from the north-east end of Stratford District. This is as rural as the Midlands get. There are two small towns, Southam and Wellesbourne, both with populations of around 5,000. Neither is very attractive, and Southam could be described as quite rundown, and there is some council housing here. The rest is villages and farms. Many of the villages are decidedly workaday, and far from the picture postcard Cotswold villages to the south and west. The Oxford canal wends its way through this area, and at the foot of the Cotswold ridge is the vale of the Red Horse. The horse is no longer extant, and its colour reflected the Permo-Triassic sandstones at the foot of the Jurassic Cotswolds. Here also is Edge Hill, site of a famous civil war battle, and to the north the curious grassy outlier of Burton Dassett country park. The M40 cuts through the middle of this area, past the motor museum at the village of Gaydon, where there is a Jaguar Land Rover factory and quite a lot of new housing development. In fact there is quite a lot of development throughout the area in the form of small additions to the villages. The seat also takes in the two southern wards of Rugby District, which sit to the north of the Stratford section, and to the east of the Warwick section. This accounts for just 8000 voters and is as rural as the Stratford section.
This was a brand new seat in 2010, when Warwickshire gained a seat. Kenilworth was previously linked with Rugby since 1983, and before then was part of the Warwick seat. The Stratford seat was significantly oversized. It is very safely Conservative with high levels of owner-occupation throughout, and over 40% managerial occupations everywhere except Southam. The Warwick section, both Kenilworth and the commuter villages is over 50%. Locally the Liberal Democrats have traditional strength in Kenilworth, reflecting the high levels of education here, and are competitive in Wellesbourne. They can make the occasional victory in the rural wards. The Greens made a gain in Kenilworth at the last local elections, as part of their general push in Warwick District. The only place where there is any Labour vote is Southam, although they haven’t actually managed to win it this century. There must have been a significant Labour vote in Kenilworth though when Labour won the seat that contained it in 1997 and 2001. The MP is former Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright, first elected for Rughy & Kenilworth in 2005, when he took the seat from Labour.
The seat is very slightly undersized, and Warwick & Leamington is very slightly oversized. The Boundary Commission propose to remedy this by transferring the rural ward of Budbrooke to the south-west of the town to this seat. This will have no effect here.
Census data: owner-occupied 78% (39/573 in England & Wales), private rented 11% (471st), social rented 10% (515th).
: White 96%, Black 0%, South Asian 1%, Mixed 1%, Other 1%
: Managerial & professional 48% (60th), Routine & Semi-routine 19% (521st)
: Degree 38%(61st), Minimal qualifications 27%(518th)
: Students 5% (160th), Over 65: 21% (85th)
The smaller half of the seat comes from the north-east end of Stratford District. This is as rural as the Midlands get. There are two small towns, Southam and Wellesbourne, both with populations of around 5,000. Neither is very attractive, and Southam could be described as quite rundown, and there is some council housing here. The rest is villages and farms. Many of the villages are decidedly workaday, and far from the picture postcard Cotswold villages to the south and west. The Oxford canal wends its way through this area, and at the foot of the Cotswold ridge is the vale of the Red Horse. The horse is no longer extant, and its colour reflected the Permo-Triassic sandstones at the foot of the Jurassic Cotswolds. Here also is Edge Hill, site of a famous civil war battle, and to the north the curious grassy outlier of Burton Dassett country park. The M40 cuts through the middle of this area, past the motor museum at the village of Gaydon, where there is a Jaguar Land Rover factory and quite a lot of new housing development. In fact there is quite a lot of development throughout the area in the form of small additions to the villages. The seat also takes in the two southern wards of Rugby District, which sit to the north of the Stratford section, and to the east of the Warwick section. This accounts for just 8000 voters and is as rural as the Stratford section.
This was a brand new seat in 2010, when Warwickshire gained a seat. Kenilworth was previously linked with Rugby since 1983, and before then was part of the Warwick seat. The Stratford seat was significantly oversized. It is very safely Conservative with high levels of owner-occupation throughout, and over 40% managerial occupations everywhere except Southam. The Warwick section, both Kenilworth and the commuter villages is over 50%. Locally the Liberal Democrats have traditional strength in Kenilworth, reflecting the high levels of education here, and are competitive in Wellesbourne. They can make the occasional victory in the rural wards. The Greens made a gain in Kenilworth at the last local elections, as part of their general push in Warwick District. The only place where there is any Labour vote is Southam, although they haven’t actually managed to win it this century. There must have been a significant Labour vote in Kenilworth though when Labour won the seat that contained it in 1997 and 2001. The MP is former Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright, first elected for Rughy & Kenilworth in 2005, when he took the seat from Labour.
The seat is very slightly undersized, and Warwick & Leamington is very slightly oversized. The Boundary Commission propose to remedy this by transferring the rural ward of Budbrooke to the south-west of the town to this seat. This will have no effect here.
Census data: owner-occupied 78% (39/573 in England & Wales), private rented 11% (471st), social rented 10% (515th).
: White 96%, Black 0%, South Asian 1%, Mixed 1%, Other 1%
: Managerial & professional 48% (60th), Routine & Semi-routine 19% (521st)
: Degree 38%(61st), Minimal qualifications 27%(518th)
: Students 5% (160th), Over 65: 21% (85th)
2010 | % | 2015 | % | 2017 | % | 2019 | % | |
Conservative | 25,945 | 53.6% | 28,474 | 58.4% | 31,207 | 60.8% | 30,351 | 57.7% |
Labour | 6,949 | 14.3% | 7,472 | 15.3% | 13,121 | 25.6% | 9,440 | 17.9% |
Liberal Democrat | 13,393 | 27.7% | 4,913 | 10.1% | 4,921 | 9.6% | 9,998 | 19.0% |
UKIP | 1,214 | 2.5% | 5,467 | 11.2% | 929 | 1.8% | ||
Green | 568 | 1.2% | 1,956 | 4.0% | 1,133 | 2.2% | 2,351 | 4.5% |
Others | 362 | 0.7% | 509 | 1.0% | 457 | 0.9% | ||
Majority | 12,552 | 25.9% | 21,002 | 43.0% | 18,086 | 35.2% | 20,353 | 38.7% |
