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 in the 2008 council elections. The Member of Parliament for Tunbridge Wells is the Conservative Greg Clark, who was elected in 2005 with a majority of 9,988 and held the seat in 2010 with a majority of 15,576. The constituency has been Conservative since its inception in 1974 for the 1974 General Election; the two previous MPs were Sir Patrick Mayhew (1974–1997) and the former Asda chairman Archie Norman (1997–2005). In 2006 the town of Royal Tunbridge Wells was estimated to have a population of approximately 56,500. The wider borough of Royal Tunbridge Wells is home to considerably more people—some