More compactly urban since 2010, the seat retains a high proportion of the city's most garden-rich, grandest houses and landscaped civic parks. Held by Conservatives continuously for 112 years, it was at various points represented by Conservative cabinet ministers Michael Hicks-Beach, Oliver Stanley, Walter Monckton and William Waldegrave. As part of a national Labour Party landslide, exceeding that of 1945, the 1997 gain by Valerie Davey was from a third-placed starting point for the party's candidate in 1992. Many of the townhouses in Bristol were subdivided in the latter half of the 20th century, during which time the size of the University of Bristol increased (the city's largest single independent employer which is chiefly in the seat).