Saffron Walden (UK Parliament constituency) It borders Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, and also extends deep into the middle of Essex near Chelmsford. Three medium-sized market towns, Saffron Walden, Dunmow and Halstead are in the constituency. All three have historic links, and are busy and regionally visitor-drawing towns in the South East. The largest single source of employment in the constituency is Stansted Airport, while there are also a host of small businesses, many of them high-tech, along and at the ends of the London-Cambridge corridor. The constituency consists of Census Output Areas of two local government districts with similar characteristics. Uttlesford district forms the bulk, and
Trade and use of saffron flourished in European locations extending from Asia Minor, where it originated, to Saffron Walden in England, where it was naturalised. Only subsequently, when its labour-intensive cultivation became largely centred in Kashmir, did it seem sufficiently exotic to qualify as one of the most precious of spices."Saffron crocus cultivation has long centered on a broad belt of Eurasia bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the southwest to India and China in the northeast. The major producers of antiquity—Iran, Spain, India, and Greece—continue to dominate the world trade. The cultivation of saffron in the Americas was begun by members of the Schwenkfelder