Post by Robert Waller on Sept 7, 2023 20:18:49 GMT
From a widely incomprehensible name to a clumsy one. This constituency is largely the successor to just plain Eddisbury, including 56.7% of that current division, but it also includes 24.5% of City of Chester, 9.8% of Weaver Vale, and 5.6% of Crewe & Nantwich, so it isn’t just the nomenclature that is a bit of a mongrel. Often ‘bits and pieces’ seats are named Mid this or that, but that name has already been taken in Cheshire in the 2023 review (and almost all the rest of Eddisbury will go into it). So the core of Cheshire will be covered by two seats that, it could be said, have no beating heart or soul to offer a clear characterisation.
We need to start to unravel our subject with an assessment of its major component, Eddisbury. In the category “where the …. is that?”, this presently existing seat is in fact named after a medieval ‘hundred’, 'Eddisbury' being in such use since at least the late 12th century, and also Eddisbury hill with its Iron Age hill fort. There was a suggestion in a previous boundary review, prior to 1997, to create a constituency in Sussex named after another hill fort, Chanctonbury (Ring), but it was abandoned after the inquiries. Eddisbury was previously in existence as a parliamentary constituency from 1885 until 1950, when it was split between the Crewe, Northwich, Chester and Runcorn divisions. Reconstituted in 1983, the name Eddisbury was originally threatened in the boundary changes due to come into force by the next (probably 2024) general election, before it arose like a phoenix from the ashes at a late stage in the review process.
The present Eddisbury constituency in effect covers the south western quadrant of Cheshire. It is comfortably the largest in area in the county, reaching the M56 at one point at its northern extreme and the Welsh border to the west. The most populous community included by far is Winsford, which is rather anomalous in its character compared with the seat as a whole. The wards within Winsford town currently add up to around 25,000 electors; they include such quaint names as Over and Gravel. Winsford is doubly unusual for this neck of the woods. It originally developed due to the salt mining industry associated also with Northwich and Middlewich, which created a scarred landscape very different from the soft green agricultural countryside of the majority of rural Cheshire, including the Winsford flashes, lakes created by subsidence caused by brine extraction. Then the 1952 Town Development Act designated it as an Expanded Town, principally to take overspill population from Liverpool. Winsford is therefore not quite a ‘New Town’, but it could be argued that it is a little bit ‘Kirkby’.
As this implies, its political preferences have also been untypical of its surroundings. For example, both Winsford electoral divisions on Cheshire county council were won by Labour continuously from 1981 to 2005, when it was abolished and replaced by two unitary authorities. Since 2008 this pattern has largely continued, with Labour returning four of the seven councillors allocated across four Winsford wards in 2023, the most recent elections for Cheshire West & Chester. However Labour’s main rivals in Winsford are not other parties but the local Independents, who took the other three council seats. Yet Eddisbury has always been a safe Conservative parliamentary seat, and in December 2019 it provided a sheltered haven for Edward Timpson (MP for the much more marginal Crewe and Nantwich between 2008 and 2017) with a majority of 18,443, despite the presence of its sitting MP Antoinette Sandbach as a 'Remain' defector to the Liberal Democrats.
The reason why Eddisbury has been so Conservative - despite Winsford - lies in the nature of the rest of the seat. There is (or at least used to be) a concept known as la France profonde. This referred to the existence if a deep and almost mystic traditional culture, located largely in rural regions where people lived in villages and small towns, far removed from the pace of change and challenge in cosmopolitan cities. In a way, this is reminiscent of much of the Eddisbury constituency. According to the most recent available Census figures, it was still 97% white, with 95% born in the United Kingdom; it was composed overwhelmingly of single family households. It is more elderly than average. Most striking of all, apart from Winsford there are no large towns. The most populous independent communities include Tarporley (population 2,600), Audlem (under 2,000), Malpas (little more then 1,500) and Tarvin (2,700). It is true that Eddisbury also includes Davenham, which is home to over 5,000, but which is really a suburb of Northwich; and the seat also reaches the orbit of the city of Chester at Waverton. More typical though are the numerous villages, such as Wrenbury on the Nantwich to Llangollen canal, Marbury in ‘mere’ country – its parish has five meres (large Cheshire ponds) which, unlike the human-caused flashes, were originally glacial kettle-holes - and Beeston with its two castles, one more ancient than the other, standing prominently in the Peckforton hills. This is indeed deep Cheshire, not commuting Cheshire or, Lord forbid, Footballers' Wives’ Cheshire.
It is also very Conservative Cheshire. In the May 2023 elections in this seat to the two Cheshire unitary authorities (Eddisbury, large as it is, straddles both), the Tories won every rural/small town division except for a solitary Liberal Democrat success in Tarvin and a handful of Independents. Labour did not contest the rural wards, or obtained a derisory reward (7% in Tarporley for example). This is the basis of the solidity of the parliamentary seat. In December 2019 the Liberal Democrats, probably boosted somewhat by Antoinette Sandbach’s candidature, did leap by 12.6%, more than tripling their share – but this still left them at below 20% and in third place. The closest Labour ever came was in their landslide year in 1997, when they fell short by just 1,185 – but they also fell short narrowly in the 1999 byelection caused by the dispatch of the long-serving MP Sir Alastair Goodlad to be High Commissioner of Australia (translation rather than transportation), although it was strongly targeted at the time. In 1999 Labour lost by just under 2,000. The gap in 2019 was a little short of 20,000. The reason for the extra zero lies in the political developments within these 20 years, including the transformation in the nature and direction of the appeal of the Labour party. The Conservatives seem to be secure in their Eddisbury fort(ress).
The Boundary Commission provisionally changed the name to South Cheshire. The recommendations involved the removal of most, but not all, of Winsford (Over & Verdin would remain) and other northern areas, all to Northwich; and the addition of replacement territory principally in the suburbs of Chester that lie south of the River Dee (Handbridge Park and Lache electoral divisions) and its commuting villages (Christleton & Huntington), but also with small sections from Crewe & Nantwich (Wybunbury) and Weaver Vale (around Weaverham). Overall this would not make a significant impact on the safety of the seat – the Chester section, although not clearly pro-Labour like most of the city, does to an extent maintain Labour’s position having lost the bulk of Winsford. Lache in particularly has a large minority of social housing, and Handbridge Park has almost 50% with degree level education (though this may not fit with the suggestion that the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks was set and originally largely filmed there).
Overall, however, the removal of Winsford has moved the demographic statistics of the new seat, however cobbled together it seems, considerably towards a very high owner occupation percentage, and a very sparse social rented sector indeed. The occupational class figures have moved upmarket, as have the terminal education qualifications. These changes are less of a boost for the Conservatives than they used to be, but they should still be able to hold on with some degree of comfort, in some very comfortable parts of the land.
After the inquiry process, the revised and final recommendations made two changes. First, the Winsford ward was reunited with its fellows from the town in the seat originally called Northwich but now to be Mid Cheshire, and in exchange Weaver & Cuddington ward retained. Second, the Commission suggested renaming this seat Chester South and Eddisbury. This will have the advantage of pacifying some of those many objectors to the split in the city, and also satisfying enthusiasts for hundreds, hills, and forts thereon. Other may conclude, though, that the name - and the seat itself - is something of a mess.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 24.2% 198/575
Owner occupied 76.8% 31/575
Private rented 13.9% 487/575
Social rented 9.3% 538/575
White 96.1% 125/575
Black 0.5% 445/575
Asian 1.6% 441/575
Managerial & professional 43.7% 55/575
Routine & Semi-routine 16.6% 493/575
Degree level 42.9% 81/575
No qualifications 13.0% 502/575
Students 5.8% 252/575
General Election 2019: Eddisbury
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Edward Timpson 30,095 56.8 -0.1
Labour Terry Savage 11,652 22.0 -11.6
Liberal Democrats Antoinette Sandbach 9,582 18.1 +12.6
Green Louise Jewkes 1,191 2.2 +0.7
UKIP Andrea Allen 451 0.9 -1.3
C Majority 18,443 34.8 +11.5
2019 electorate 73,700
Turnout 52,971 71.9 -1.25
Conservative hold
Swings
5.8 Lab to C
5.8 C to LD
12.1 Lab to LD
Boundary changes
The new Chester South and Eddisbury will consist of
56.7% of Eddisbury
24.5% of City of Chester
9.8% of Weaver Vale
5.6% of Crewe and Nantwich
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/north-west/North%20West_229_Chester%20South%20and%20Eddisbury_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
We need to start to unravel our subject with an assessment of its major component, Eddisbury. In the category “where the …. is that?”, this presently existing seat is in fact named after a medieval ‘hundred’, 'Eddisbury' being in such use since at least the late 12th century, and also Eddisbury hill with its Iron Age hill fort. There was a suggestion in a previous boundary review, prior to 1997, to create a constituency in Sussex named after another hill fort, Chanctonbury (Ring), but it was abandoned after the inquiries. Eddisbury was previously in existence as a parliamentary constituency from 1885 until 1950, when it was split between the Crewe, Northwich, Chester and Runcorn divisions. Reconstituted in 1983, the name Eddisbury was originally threatened in the boundary changes due to come into force by the next (probably 2024) general election, before it arose like a phoenix from the ashes at a late stage in the review process.
The present Eddisbury constituency in effect covers the south western quadrant of Cheshire. It is comfortably the largest in area in the county, reaching the M56 at one point at its northern extreme and the Welsh border to the west. The most populous community included by far is Winsford, which is rather anomalous in its character compared with the seat as a whole. The wards within Winsford town currently add up to around 25,000 electors; they include such quaint names as Over and Gravel. Winsford is doubly unusual for this neck of the woods. It originally developed due to the salt mining industry associated also with Northwich and Middlewich, which created a scarred landscape very different from the soft green agricultural countryside of the majority of rural Cheshire, including the Winsford flashes, lakes created by subsidence caused by brine extraction. Then the 1952 Town Development Act designated it as an Expanded Town, principally to take overspill population from Liverpool. Winsford is therefore not quite a ‘New Town’, but it could be argued that it is a little bit ‘Kirkby’.
As this implies, its political preferences have also been untypical of its surroundings. For example, both Winsford electoral divisions on Cheshire county council were won by Labour continuously from 1981 to 2005, when it was abolished and replaced by two unitary authorities. Since 2008 this pattern has largely continued, with Labour returning four of the seven councillors allocated across four Winsford wards in 2023, the most recent elections for Cheshire West & Chester. However Labour’s main rivals in Winsford are not other parties but the local Independents, who took the other three council seats. Yet Eddisbury has always been a safe Conservative parliamentary seat, and in December 2019 it provided a sheltered haven for Edward Timpson (MP for the much more marginal Crewe and Nantwich between 2008 and 2017) with a majority of 18,443, despite the presence of its sitting MP Antoinette Sandbach as a 'Remain' defector to the Liberal Democrats.
The reason why Eddisbury has been so Conservative - despite Winsford - lies in the nature of the rest of the seat. There is (or at least used to be) a concept known as la France profonde. This referred to the existence if a deep and almost mystic traditional culture, located largely in rural regions where people lived in villages and small towns, far removed from the pace of change and challenge in cosmopolitan cities. In a way, this is reminiscent of much of the Eddisbury constituency. According to the most recent available Census figures, it was still 97% white, with 95% born in the United Kingdom; it was composed overwhelmingly of single family households. It is more elderly than average. Most striking of all, apart from Winsford there are no large towns. The most populous independent communities include Tarporley (population 2,600), Audlem (under 2,000), Malpas (little more then 1,500) and Tarvin (2,700). It is true that Eddisbury also includes Davenham, which is home to over 5,000, but which is really a suburb of Northwich; and the seat also reaches the orbit of the city of Chester at Waverton. More typical though are the numerous villages, such as Wrenbury on the Nantwich to Llangollen canal, Marbury in ‘mere’ country – its parish has five meres (large Cheshire ponds) which, unlike the human-caused flashes, were originally glacial kettle-holes - and Beeston with its two castles, one more ancient than the other, standing prominently in the Peckforton hills. This is indeed deep Cheshire, not commuting Cheshire or, Lord forbid, Footballers' Wives’ Cheshire.
It is also very Conservative Cheshire. In the May 2023 elections in this seat to the two Cheshire unitary authorities (Eddisbury, large as it is, straddles both), the Tories won every rural/small town division except for a solitary Liberal Democrat success in Tarvin and a handful of Independents. Labour did not contest the rural wards, or obtained a derisory reward (7% in Tarporley for example). This is the basis of the solidity of the parliamentary seat. In December 2019 the Liberal Democrats, probably boosted somewhat by Antoinette Sandbach’s candidature, did leap by 12.6%, more than tripling their share – but this still left them at below 20% and in third place. The closest Labour ever came was in their landslide year in 1997, when they fell short by just 1,185 – but they also fell short narrowly in the 1999 byelection caused by the dispatch of the long-serving MP Sir Alastair Goodlad to be High Commissioner of Australia (translation rather than transportation), although it was strongly targeted at the time. In 1999 Labour lost by just under 2,000. The gap in 2019 was a little short of 20,000. The reason for the extra zero lies in the political developments within these 20 years, including the transformation in the nature and direction of the appeal of the Labour party. The Conservatives seem to be secure in their Eddisbury fort(ress).
The Boundary Commission provisionally changed the name to South Cheshire. The recommendations involved the removal of most, but not all, of Winsford (Over & Verdin would remain) and other northern areas, all to Northwich; and the addition of replacement territory principally in the suburbs of Chester that lie south of the River Dee (Handbridge Park and Lache electoral divisions) and its commuting villages (Christleton & Huntington), but also with small sections from Crewe & Nantwich (Wybunbury) and Weaver Vale (around Weaverham). Overall this would not make a significant impact on the safety of the seat – the Chester section, although not clearly pro-Labour like most of the city, does to an extent maintain Labour’s position having lost the bulk of Winsford. Lache in particularly has a large minority of social housing, and Handbridge Park has almost 50% with degree level education (though this may not fit with the suggestion that the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks was set and originally largely filmed there).
Overall, however, the removal of Winsford has moved the demographic statistics of the new seat, however cobbled together it seems, considerably towards a very high owner occupation percentage, and a very sparse social rented sector indeed. The occupational class figures have moved upmarket, as have the terminal education qualifications. These changes are less of a boost for the Conservatives than they used to be, but they should still be able to hold on with some degree of comfort, in some very comfortable parts of the land.
After the inquiry process, the revised and final recommendations made two changes. First, the Winsford ward was reunited with its fellows from the town in the seat originally called Northwich but now to be Mid Cheshire, and in exchange Weaver & Cuddington ward retained. Second, the Commission suggested renaming this seat Chester South and Eddisbury. This will have the advantage of pacifying some of those many objectors to the split in the city, and also satisfying enthusiasts for hundreds, hills, and forts thereon. Other may conclude, though, that the name - and the seat itself - is something of a mess.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 24.2% 198/575
Owner occupied 76.8% 31/575
Private rented 13.9% 487/575
Social rented 9.3% 538/575
White 96.1% 125/575
Black 0.5% 445/575
Asian 1.6% 441/575
Managerial & professional 43.7% 55/575
Routine & Semi-routine 16.6% 493/575
Degree level 42.9% 81/575
No qualifications 13.0% 502/575
Students 5.8% 252/575
General Election 2019: Eddisbury
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Edward Timpson 30,095 56.8 -0.1
Labour Terry Savage 11,652 22.0 -11.6
Liberal Democrats Antoinette Sandbach 9,582 18.1 +12.6
Green Louise Jewkes 1,191 2.2 +0.7
UKIP Andrea Allen 451 0.9 -1.3
C Majority 18,443 34.8 +11.5
2019 electorate 73,700
Turnout 52,971 71.9 -1.25
Conservative hold
Swings
5.8 Lab to C
5.8 C to LD
12.1 Lab to LD
Boundary changes
The new Chester South and Eddisbury will consist of
56.7% of Eddisbury
24.5% of City of Chester
9.8% of Weaver Vale
5.6% of Crewe and Nantwich
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/north-west/North%20West_229_Chester%20South%20and%20Eddisbury_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
| Con | 32703 | 59.2% |
| Lab | 11877 | 21.5% |
| LD | 8446 | 15.3% |
| Green | 11163 | 2.1% |
| Brexit | 569 | 1.0% |
| Oth | 451 | 0.8% |
| Con Majority | 20826 | 37.7% |