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
Saffron Walden of housing estates in the 1970s and 1980s. Saffron Walden's unofficial coat of arms showed the saffron crocus within the walls of the castle in the form of an heraldic pun – as in, "Saffron walled-in". In 1961, a formal coat of arms was granted by the College of Arms and this was adapted in 1974 into its current form. The town has three ceremonial maces. The large mace was given to Saffron Walden by James II in 1685 and provides an early recording of the unofficial coat of arms. Made of silver gilt, it is approximately long. Two smaller