Royal Tunbridge Wells small districts, "named after the hills on which they stand, Mount Ephraim, Mount Pleasant and Mount Sion; the other is called the Wells..." The 1680s saw a building boom in the town: carefully planned shops were built beside the long Pantiles promenade (then known as the Walks), and the Mount Sion road, on which lodging house keepers were to build, was laid out in small plots. Tradesmen in the town dealt in the luxury goods demanded by their patrons, which would certainly have included Tunbridge ware, a kind of decoratively inlaid woodwork. "They have made the wells very commodious by
Royal Tunbridge Wells and Tunbridge Wells Hospitals, employing around 2500 people; the largest single commercial employer was AXA PPP healthcare, employing around 1,700 in four offices (PPP House, Union House, Phillips House and International House). Tunbridge Wells had a relatively low unemployment rate of around 1.0% in August 2008, compared to a UK national rate of around 5.4%. Tunbridge Wells is at the hub of a series of roads, the primary ones being the A26, which runs from Maidstone to Newhaven; the A264, which runs from Five Oaks to Pembury (via Crawley and East Grinstead); and the A267, which runs south from Tunbridge