Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2023 5:49:45 GMT
Holborn & St Pancras s probably one of the top 10 constituencies your average Brit has visited, hosting as it does Euston (with its famous arch, knocked down in 1962) and St Pancras International stations. St Pancras got its 'International' when the Eurostar opened in 2000, offering direct services to Paris and beyond (not cheap, mind you, but you can get £35 tickets each way now and then).
Starting in the south, Holborn was a metropolitan borough in its own right from 1900 to 1965. Holborn was the smallest borough in the 1889-1965 County of London, smaller than the City of London, which it borders. Holborn is the heart of legal London, containing two of the four Inns of Court (Grey's and Lincoln's). The other two are over the border in the City. Any aspiring barrister in this country must pass through one of these Inns. There used to be more, with Furnival's Inn (an Inn of Chancery) pulled down in 1897 and replaced by an imposing red-brick building). Staple Inn is the only Inn of Chancery to survive (with its evocative medieval frontage - Old Holborn Tobacco has this ancient building emblazoned on its pouches). There was also Bernard's Inn (now hosting Gresham College).
This area's educational links don't stop with the Inns of Court, and University College London (including Jeremy Bentham's remains) dominates the Bloomsbury area. The London School of Economics began life here in 1895 and has a strong presence in this seat (briefly decamping to Peterhouse at Cambridge University during World War II) - the LSE 'estate' includes properties on Lincoln's Inn Fields (the former Land Registry office for one).
This seat is linked historically to the Dukes of Bedford, the Russell family, including Russell Square, Bedford Square, Woburn Square and more. Their protestations ensured that most of London's major railway stations in these parts straddle a line along Euston Road.
Kingsway is a major thoroughfare where this seat's boundary with the City of Westminster at the Strand is, facing the imposing Bush House across the road (from the 1940s to 2012 that hosted the BBC World Service and HMRC (now King's College London' has its Strand Campus here).
However, this area is far from a collection of ivory towers. Since its incorporation into the wider London Borough of Camden, there's been extensive social housing built in the Holborn area, particularly towards the locale's border with Islington. There are many 19th-century blocks here between the universities, law schools and Hatton Garden's famous jewellery quarter. Holborn's residential populace is diverse: there's a mosque in this seat, and you can spot Bengali signage in Holborn's public library. Holborn was once a stand-alone constituency where the business vote arguably saved Tory Max Aitken in 1945. Those days are long gone, and the last Tory to represent the area in Westminster was Geoffrey Johnson-Smith, who won Holborn and St Pancras South (this seat's predecessor) in 1959 for a term.
The Tories did win a council seat in Holborn in 1977, but Labour rules the roost here aside from a relatively close contest in the Holborn and Covent Garden ward in 2006. This area transitions into the City of London with Fleet Street crossing one authority to the next. There are several popular pubs in Holborn, including the Cittie of Yorke (rebuilt in the 1920s and managed by the Sam Smith brewery), the Ship (on the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, The Seven Stars (replete with a cat-wearing barrister's ruff) survived the Great Fire of London and its windows reveal its indelible links to the legal profession.
Moving towards King's Cross, Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital sits on Queen's Square in Holborn, just off Old Gloucester Street. Moving north, you reach the Brunswick centre (with attractive post-war housing above the usual chain shops). Then you find yourself on Judd Street, which has a mix of grand 19th-century housing (such as Grenville mansions) and 20th-century post-war developments, with Camden Town Hall on the corner of Judd Street and Euston Road.
King's Cross ward is dominated by hotels and rented housing, with many local businesses relying on footfall from King's Cross St Pancras station.
St Pancras ward now spans Euston Road, one of London's busiest roads, succeeding a pairing with Somers Town. St Pancras was, until recently, a red light district, but much of the land abutting the Regent's Canal has seen extensive redevelopment with an upscale shopping hub, Coal Drops Yard (a nod to the area's locomotive history) and often nicknamed Cash Drops Hard by its often captive audience waiting for trains (the Lightroom Art Gallery could set you back £27 or more for a ticket to its exhibitions). There are many new-build apartments, and the Gasholders project includes £10,000,000 properties.
Some broader development is affordable housing, but 40% of the market rate is still a princely sum in London.
Euston and Somers Town are diverse areas with large British Bangladeshi populations (there's even a Bangladeshi cash-and-carry just off the Euston Road as you head north towards Camden Town. Much of this area is at the coalface of HS2, with many of these neighbourhoods seeing significant redevelopment and regeneration. Still, there are many tower blocks here, including Silverdale and Boroughdale (a lot of that is right-to-buy and rented out to students, with varying quality of accommodation).
The hospital where many of the events of Operation Mincemeat took place during World War II is still here in Somers Town, dwarfing the nearby St Pancras old church.
St Pancras was also a County of London borough, where Camden Town (which lent its name to the post-1964 London borough) dominates. Camden Town is ever-popular with visitors from Essex, Kent and beyond, and Camden Market is bustling. The Regents Canal hugs the Camden Town ward taking you to this seat's share of Primrose Hill, a more upmarket area than Camden Town, which from 2002 to 2022 shared three Councillors with Camden Town, probably helping the Lib Dems get a foot in the door in that ward back in the day.
Primrose Hill is a popular park, and the area had its national rail station until 1992. It's still there. Residents are more likely to use the Chalk Farm to get into London.
This seat also contains Camden's sliver of Regents Park, which Westminster has the lion's share of. There are many council flats in Regents Park. This ward also includes Mornington Crescent tube. Regents Park ward is generally a reliable Labour area, and even in that party's annus horribilis of 2006, they held all three seats here.
Somers Town hosts several famous national institutions, including the British Library and the Francis Crick Institute, and the 19th-century hospital discussed earlier in this entry. Somers Town is also pretty resolutely Labour.
Kentish Town is where you'll find Keir Starmer's residence and the Leader of the Opposition is said to be a fan of The Pineapple pub, where he watched the European championship in 2021. Kentish Town also has its fair share of council housing here (including Maitland Park). Kentish Town is well-connected, with London Underground, national rail and an Overground station serving the area.
Kentish Town used to have some Lib Dem Councillors but is now one of the better areas for the Greens in Camden. Following boundary changes, Labour will hold every council seat in this constituency, with only the Kentish Town North and Primrose Hill competitive to any degree. It's perhaps not surprising that Kentish Town North should see a decent Green showing, given that it borders Highgate Ward, where the Greens have always won something since 2006.
This seat used to have a sizeable Jewish community, and the Jews' Free School began life in Camden Town before moving to Brent. This area also had many cockneys in the past, but that's far less true nowadays. A pie and mash shop is a nod to that history, where you can get jellied eels.
Holborn & St Pancras's representatives have tremendous staying power: Councillor Roy Shaw represented Grafton and then Haverstock ward from 1964 until his death in 2008, and Frank Dobson held this seat from 1979 to 2015.
While this seat has seen fleeting success by the Tories in the past (they held a Bloomsbury seat from 2006 to 2010, after winning by two votes) and the Lib Dems have at various times held seats here and there, this is a Labour bastion, and its MPs have often sought higher office, including Frank Dobson who lost the inaugural London Mayoral contest to one Ken Livingstone. Since the late Frank Dobson's retirement in 2015, Keir Starmer, former Director of Public Prosecutions and one-time Shadow Brexit Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn has been the MP. Following the 2019 route for Labour, Starmer sought and won the 2020 Labour leadership race. He now looks set to become the first Labour Prime Minister since Gordon Brown, barring some Lazarus-like recovery for the Conservative Party.
Starting in the south, Holborn was a metropolitan borough in its own right from 1900 to 1965. Holborn was the smallest borough in the 1889-1965 County of London, smaller than the City of London, which it borders. Holborn is the heart of legal London, containing two of the four Inns of Court (Grey's and Lincoln's). The other two are over the border in the City. Any aspiring barrister in this country must pass through one of these Inns. There used to be more, with Furnival's Inn (an Inn of Chancery) pulled down in 1897 and replaced by an imposing red-brick building). Staple Inn is the only Inn of Chancery to survive (with its evocative medieval frontage - Old Holborn Tobacco has this ancient building emblazoned on its pouches). There was also Bernard's Inn (now hosting Gresham College).
This area's educational links don't stop with the Inns of Court, and University College London (including Jeremy Bentham's remains) dominates the Bloomsbury area. The London School of Economics began life here in 1895 and has a strong presence in this seat (briefly decamping to Peterhouse at Cambridge University during World War II) - the LSE 'estate' includes properties on Lincoln's Inn Fields (the former Land Registry office for one).
This seat is linked historically to the Dukes of Bedford, the Russell family, including Russell Square, Bedford Square, Woburn Square and more. Their protestations ensured that most of London's major railway stations in these parts straddle a line along Euston Road.
Kingsway is a major thoroughfare where this seat's boundary with the City of Westminster at the Strand is, facing the imposing Bush House across the road (from the 1940s to 2012 that hosted the BBC World Service and HMRC (now King's College London' has its Strand Campus here).
However, this area is far from a collection of ivory towers. Since its incorporation into the wider London Borough of Camden, there's been extensive social housing built in the Holborn area, particularly towards the locale's border with Islington. There are many 19th-century blocks here between the universities, law schools and Hatton Garden's famous jewellery quarter. Holborn's residential populace is diverse: there's a mosque in this seat, and you can spot Bengali signage in Holborn's public library. Holborn was once a stand-alone constituency where the business vote arguably saved Tory Max Aitken in 1945. Those days are long gone, and the last Tory to represent the area in Westminster was Geoffrey Johnson-Smith, who won Holborn and St Pancras South (this seat's predecessor) in 1959 for a term.
The Tories did win a council seat in Holborn in 1977, but Labour rules the roost here aside from a relatively close contest in the Holborn and Covent Garden ward in 2006. This area transitions into the City of London with Fleet Street crossing one authority to the next. There are several popular pubs in Holborn, including the Cittie of Yorke (rebuilt in the 1920s and managed by the Sam Smith brewery), the Ship (on the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, The Seven Stars (replete with a cat-wearing barrister's ruff) survived the Great Fire of London and its windows reveal its indelible links to the legal profession.
Moving towards King's Cross, Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital sits on Queen's Square in Holborn, just off Old Gloucester Street. Moving north, you reach the Brunswick centre (with attractive post-war housing above the usual chain shops). Then you find yourself on Judd Street, which has a mix of grand 19th-century housing (such as Grenville mansions) and 20th-century post-war developments, with Camden Town Hall on the corner of Judd Street and Euston Road.
King's Cross ward is dominated by hotels and rented housing, with many local businesses relying on footfall from King's Cross St Pancras station.
St Pancras ward now spans Euston Road, one of London's busiest roads, succeeding a pairing with Somers Town. St Pancras was, until recently, a red light district, but much of the land abutting the Regent's Canal has seen extensive redevelopment with an upscale shopping hub, Coal Drops Yard (a nod to the area's locomotive history) and often nicknamed Cash Drops Hard by its often captive audience waiting for trains (the Lightroom Art Gallery could set you back £27 or more for a ticket to its exhibitions). There are many new-build apartments, and the Gasholders project includes £10,000,000 properties.
Some broader development is affordable housing, but 40% of the market rate is still a princely sum in London.
Euston and Somers Town are diverse areas with large British Bangladeshi populations (there's even a Bangladeshi cash-and-carry just off the Euston Road as you head north towards Camden Town. Much of this area is at the coalface of HS2, with many of these neighbourhoods seeing significant redevelopment and regeneration. Still, there are many tower blocks here, including Silverdale and Boroughdale (a lot of that is right-to-buy and rented out to students, with varying quality of accommodation).
The hospital where many of the events of Operation Mincemeat took place during World War II is still here in Somers Town, dwarfing the nearby St Pancras old church.
St Pancras was also a County of London borough, where Camden Town (which lent its name to the post-1964 London borough) dominates. Camden Town is ever-popular with visitors from Essex, Kent and beyond, and Camden Market is bustling. The Regents Canal hugs the Camden Town ward taking you to this seat's share of Primrose Hill, a more upmarket area than Camden Town, which from 2002 to 2022 shared three Councillors with Camden Town, probably helping the Lib Dems get a foot in the door in that ward back in the day.
Primrose Hill is a popular park, and the area had its national rail station until 1992. It's still there. Residents are more likely to use the Chalk Farm to get into London.
This seat also contains Camden's sliver of Regents Park, which Westminster has the lion's share of. There are many council flats in Regents Park. This ward also includes Mornington Crescent tube. Regents Park ward is generally a reliable Labour area, and even in that party's annus horribilis of 2006, they held all three seats here.
Somers Town hosts several famous national institutions, including the British Library and the Francis Crick Institute, and the 19th-century hospital discussed earlier in this entry. Somers Town is also pretty resolutely Labour.
Kentish Town is where you'll find Keir Starmer's residence and the Leader of the Opposition is said to be a fan of The Pineapple pub, where he watched the European championship in 2021. Kentish Town also has its fair share of council housing here (including Maitland Park). Kentish Town is well-connected, with London Underground, national rail and an Overground station serving the area.
Kentish Town used to have some Lib Dem Councillors but is now one of the better areas for the Greens in Camden. Following boundary changes, Labour will hold every council seat in this constituency, with only the Kentish Town North and Primrose Hill competitive to any degree. It's perhaps not surprising that Kentish Town North should see a decent Green showing, given that it borders Highgate Ward, where the Greens have always won something since 2006.
This seat used to have a sizeable Jewish community, and the Jews' Free School began life in Camden Town before moving to Brent. This area also had many cockneys in the past, but that's far less true nowadays. A pie and mash shop is a nod to that history, where you can get jellied eels.
Holborn & St Pancras's representatives have tremendous staying power: Councillor Roy Shaw represented Grafton and then Haverstock ward from 1964 until his death in 2008, and Frank Dobson held this seat from 1979 to 2015.
While this seat has seen fleeting success by the Tories in the past (they held a Bloomsbury seat from 2006 to 2010, after winning by two votes) and the Lib Dems have at various times held seats here and there, this is a Labour bastion, and its MPs have often sought higher office, including Frank Dobson who lost the inaugural London Mayoral contest to one Ken Livingstone. Since the late Frank Dobson's retirement in 2015, Keir Starmer, former Director of Public Prosecutions and one-time Shadow Brexit Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn has been the MP. Following the 2019 route for Labour, Starmer sought and won the 2020 Labour leadership race. He now looks set to become the first Labour Prime Minister since Gordon Brown, barring some Lazarus-like recovery for the Conservative Party.
