Plaque Attaque: Cumberland Cautages

Time to collect the remainder of the 400 Anniversary plaques around town. This time it was combined with one of my favourite walks, a nice wander through The Grove and down through Mount Sion. On this little jaunt you are only minutes away from the bustle of the High Street yet it's almost another world once into the gates of the Grove, thoughts lost amongst the maturing trees (most fell and were replanted after the giant storm of 1987), watching the birds pick their way through the daffodils for titbits, then out the other side at the top of Mount Sion. You'd swear you'd almost walked too far and ended up in another small kentish village what with the tiny independent garage on the kerbside, lack of pavements in places and the olde english grocery store with its front door almost touching the road. Welcome to one of the oldest sections of Royal Tunbridge Wells where settled life began in 1684.
Today's agenda though was to track down the elusive plaque of Richard Cumberland, playwright and novelist. And it was to be found adorning the side of picturesque cottage number 63a, although they could have picked any one of them as Richard Cumberland's former residence occupied the space now taken by numbers 43 to 63, no wonder 63a has gone up for sale :-)
From here it's a short walk round the corner and down towards Chapel Place with a teensy detour to visit Cumberland Walk and Cumberland Gardens which are of course named after the man himself to make the tour seem complete.
For those of you who would like to read more about Mount Sion, I can't recommend highly enough the enormous 500 page tome, A History of Mount Sion by Roger Farthing, expensive at £50, but a beautiful book regardless.

Comments

[Sue Twyman]

Lovely to read about Tunbridge Wells on your blog. My husband and family lived at a cottage in Cumberland Yard....number one. Just wondered if you knew the history of the cottage and Cumberland Yard??
Regards from Sue in New Zealand