Paddington North was a borough constituency in the Metropolitan Borough of Paddington in London which returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system. It was created in 1885, and abolished for the February 1974 general election. It was a compact and mixed residential area which included some grand mansion blocks of flats, large runs of typical London terraced houses, and some areas of working-class housing. The area moved slowly down the social scale during its existence and the construction of large amounts of social housing following the Second World War made what had been a Conservative-inclined marginal seat into a reasonably safe Labour one. Boundaries The constituency was originally made up by the northern part of Paddington Parish. In the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 it was defined as the number 2 ward of the Parish. Although Paddington had four wards, they had been drawn up thirty years before, and the number 2 ward had, by the mid-1880s, the majority of the electorate of the parish. In the boundary changes in 1918, the constituency was refashioned as the northern part of the Metropolitan Borough of Paddington. The Borough had incorporated an area formerly included in a detached part of Chelsea parish at Kensal Town, and further population expansion made the north of the Borough even more densely packed, so a shift of the boundary was required. In the end, it was decided to include the whole of the Harrow Road, Queen's Park and Maida Vale wards of Paddington, together with part of the Church ward north of the Harrow Road and Little Venice canal basin. In the boundary changes of 1948, the constituency's boundaries did not change, but the Church ward, which had been divided along the same line as the previous Parliamentary boundary with the part in Paddington North was renamed as the Town ward. Constituency profile In contrast to the southern division of Paddington, the area was almost entirely residential. When first drawn up in 1885, the development of Maida Vale had not yet been completed and parts remained agricultural fields. Up to 1918 the constituency included Paddington railway station and the Paddington canal basin, together with St Mary's Hospital. The south-east of the constituency included some Edgware Road frontage which included The Metropolitan Theatre music hall, a famous