Anke: Royal Tunbridge Wells

Windmills of The Wells

The rather ferocious winds that have been battering us all these past couple of days got me thinking about a well overdue post that I had started to write about something windy. Windmills.

The Culverden Windmill in a painting by Charles Tattershall Dodd.

Tunbridge Wells had two windmills. Sadly neither of them exist anymore but for a few remaining clues.

The Culverden Windmill, pictured above in a painting by Charles Tattershall Dodd, was constructed in around 1832 and was demolished by 1870. It has appeared in several works by the artist and there is another one below in this post. You can also see the windmill in the map below, can you find it?

Culverden Windmill on an 1849 map of Tunbridge Wells by ES Gisborne.

It was a Post Windmill, its defining feature being that the main machinery part of the building is mounted on a single vertical post, around which it can be turned to bring the sails into the wind. Even though the windmill was demolished in 1870 it appears that it had ceased functioning as a mill some twenty years before it was pulled down.

The Culverden Windmill appears in a sketch of Toad Rock by Charles Tattershall Dodd.

The Culverden Windmill in a painting by Charles Tattershall Dodd

All that remains of the other Tunbridge Wells windmill, the Calverley Windmill, is a street name, some houses bearing the name and an old pub. The parish area is also still locally called Windmill Fields. The pub, which is now a private residence, has a rather beautiful tile rendition of the mill on the front which you can see in the photo below.

Tiling on the old Windmill Tavern pub.

It's hard to establish when exactly the Calverley Mill was built. It appears on a map of 1769 but does not appear on an older map of 1730. It would therefore appear that the mill was constructed between these two dates. If anyone knows different please drop me a line.

The Calverley Windmill was a Smock Windmill, this type of windmill is made up of a sloping, horizontally weatherboarded tower which is topped off with a roof that rotates to bring the sails into the wind. The pub tiling above shows quite well the type of windmill that stood there many years before.

An excerpt showing Calverley Windmill from the great panorama by Saltmarsh.

Early in January, 1933, a local newspaper reporter stopped by the celebrations of the diamond wedding anniversary of a Mr and Mrs Smith. The two 85 year olds had lived all their lives in the neighbourhood, having in fact played together as children beneath the shadow of the old windmill. Mr. Smith remembered the mill as a very old, weather-boarded structure on a brick base, worked by fantail-operated gear; its sails swept very close to the ground. He even recalled hanging on the sails as they swung past!

He remembered that it was last used for corn-grinding about 1860 and then moved a little distance away and re-erected near the present golf links. The old structure was not used as a windmill at its new home as he didn't remember seeing its sails at work after its removal. It was used by the purchaser, a Mr. Joslin, as a shed and pulled down soon after. The inner workings were removed and taken to Crowborough for use in the newly constructed Pratt's Mill.

Calverley Windmill on an 1828 map by Decimus Burton.

Where is our nearest mill now? It's in Argos Hill. It's a Post Mill so would look very similar to how the Culverden Windmill used to look. You can pay the Argos Hill website a visit, make sure you click on the donate page to help towards the restoration, to see some really lovely photos of it. Or why not go and see the windmill for yourself, it's not currently open to the public as it is in a dangerous condition (even more reason to donate), but it can be viewed from the road.

View of Calverley Windmill by J Newman, 1875. Click for larger.

In these days of alternate energy I wonder how long it will be before the horizon is once again adorned with the spinning blades of a windmill?

Thank you to Richard Howes at Argos Hill Windmill, Michael Howes, Ian Beavis and the lovely folk at Tunbridge Wells Museum for their help in this post.

Oxfam Bookfest Walk

Sixteen of us gathered outside the museum on a gorgeously sunny Sunday morning. We were here to take a tour of town, a tour organised for the Oxfam Bookfest by a local blue badge tour guide, Catherine.

The tour group walks along York Road.

You may think that taking a tour of a town you live in would be pointless, after all you live here and know everything right? Boy you couldn’t be further wrong. This tour was specifically aimed at locals who wanted to know the deepest darkest secrets of the Wells.

Being a “New Town” tour, we were told that there would be no visiting the obvious hotspots and we’d be concentrating on our more recent history.

I’ll give you a brief rundown of the tour and some of the highlights as I really want you to go buy yourself a ticket and enjoy it for yourself.

Starting at the museum we had a brief talk about the civic buildings and what they had replaced. When shown some of the old images of Calverley Terrace the group collectively let out a lot of ooohs and there was some furious head shaking going on. Leaving Civic Way the tour walked towards the Opera House, it was supposed to take in the Adult Education Centre but as it is currently undergoing some restoration that was skipped and it was straight into the Opera House for a brief behind the scenes tour.

We all assembled in the fabulously named Crush Room Bar for another history talk. Everyone was then invited to take a walk out onto the balcony to take a look out over the new town. Living up to its name there literally was a crush to get out.

The group take it in turns being careful not to disturb the ghosts of the haunted box.

We then climbed to the dress circle to hear some more history about the performances that once were and the history of the building’s construction. There were a few gasps of disbelief to the fact that the butchers underneath used to be a Sainsburys (see comments before for more), amongst other fascinating tidbits.

If you book the tour you’ll be able to find out who once raided the opera house, who Bambi the Cat was, and what is missing from the ceiling. You’ll also be able to find out which of the boxes is haunted. Legend has it that three builders fell from the scaffolding when working on the ceiling and two of them died. As these two used to sit and have their lunch in same box every day they are said to now haunt it. Everyone naturally made a beeline for the box to see if they could feel anything. Can you smell their ham sarnies and tea in there?

Calverley New Town: Calverley Park Gardens

One of the findings that came out from a recent question on our Facebook Fan Page was that readers wanted to learn a little more about some lost buildings of Tunbridge Wells, well this ties in quite nicely with the next in the Calverley New Town Series. So, let’s explore Calverley Plain, or as we know it today, Calverley Park Gardens.

Calverley Park Gardens is a laurel-bordered road fringed with elegant and substantial villas, each standing in its own luxuriant grounds. The Gardens were laid out by Decimus Burton in 1828 at the same time as Calverley Park but it would take many more years to complete than the main Park.

The villas were all set in very informal landscapes and all had legal agreements on their construction that stated that their grounds should be of at least three quarters of an acre and that their front fences be set at least seven feet from the road with room for the planting of shrubs and bushes, a softening feature which still gives Calverley Park Gardens its character today and has been emulated in other parts of town to great success.

Map showing the virgin building grounds of Calverley Park Gardens, complete with pleasure grounds.

Walking down the gentle curve of the road from Pembury Road the sights of the newly constructed Calverley Crescent and the imposing tower of Holy Trinity Church would have slowly revealed themselves. It must've been a wonderful sight, and in fact this entrance to Tunbridge Wells is one of my favourites.

Apart from Baston Lodge, No.2 Baston Cottage was the first building laid out in Calverley Plain and was possibly meant as the entrance way or guardian property of The Gardens. It would only be fitting that the creator of the fabulous architecture of the New Town would create a small piece of it for himself and this piece was Baston Cottage. Decimus really indulged in his elegant but rustic gothick architectural style with his own home, giving it gingerbread gables and candystick chimneys.

Decimus lived in Baston Cottage for about twenty years before leaving in the 1850s when all the remaining plots of the Plain had been sold, he had also constructed No.3 The Hollies further down the road but this is as far as he got in developing Calverley Plain as the rest of the Gardens were expanded by one of his contemporaries William Willicombe. Willicombe’s villas were built with red brick with stone quoins and are quite a contrast to Decimus’s work in traditional white stone.

A view of Baston Cottage.

Baston Cottage and Lodge backed onto large pleasure grounds, and the large and imposing stone walls you see when driving or walking along Calverley Road towards the Prospect Road junction are the retaining walls for this parkland. They were laid out with various evergreens and flowers with meandering paths in between them taking the visitor on a peaceful country walk right in the centre of town. Alas over the course of time this parkland was gradually incorporated into the private plots of the neighbouring villas to give them larger gardens. You can still see several bricked up entrances to the pleasure grounds as you walk/drive along.

Sadly, Decimus's “Cottage Ornée”, Baston Cottage and Baston Lodge were demolished over a century ago. The land has been built on several times since but a small remnant of the stone walling of Baston Cottage still remains today. If you pop along to have a look take note of the boot scraper that the great man might have used to scrape the Calverley Plain construction site mud from his boots.

Details of the last remaining remnants of Baston Cottage.

This period signalled the end of the New Town’s construction but this is not where our series ends though. Stay tuned and we shall go and explore some more of the smaller but equally as interesting details.

Calverley New Town: Calverley Crescent

In 1826 John Ward acquired over 500 acres of mainly farmland that was to become the Calverley Estate, and he directed his architect, Decimus Burton, to produce plans for its development. We learnt of Calverley Park, which was the first of the main developments, in a previous post, but surely one can't write a series about Calverley New Town without evoking images of Calverley Crescent, or as it was originally called, Calverley Promenade.

Calverley Crescent today.

The original plans for the site were for a curved structure of stables with enough room for 64 horses with four large houses occupying the land behind. But, following a change of plan a few years later, this proposal was dropped in favour of a row of seventeen elegant shops with convenient private residences above them. Decimus's concept was to create a shopping parade for the New Town to eclipse the now ageing Pantiles and he designed its long curvaceous colonnade to emulate it, even down to the pillars and 18th Century windows.

Calverley Crescent in 1860 etching by Rock & Co., notice the central library and fountain.

The Promenade was built between 1830 and 1835 from locally quarried milky-white sandstone with a roofed walkway being held up ever so delicately by thin white iron pillars. In the afternoon light the newly built structure would have been a wonderfully dazzling sight to behold. The walkway was also given a raised elevation so that it created a commanding view over the Park.

The well-to-do ladies of Calverley would waft from shop to shop in their finest gowns sheltered from the sun or rain underneath the elegant canopied roof. To give their shopping experience a more aristocratic feel, an orchestra playing on the Promenade's semi-circular bandstand would serenade them as they strolled. A fountain was also laid out on the green which would provide a peaceful soundtrack during the musical off-season. It really was the most fashionable place in town to shop and the height of good taste to be seen there.

Today the promenade is home to relaxing seating and pot plants.

So, what businesses were on the Promenade?

The most striking of the originally designed features was the central library, complete with billiard room above, called the Royal Calverley Library and Reading Room. Here, for a small annual fee, you could borrow books and music, read the newspapers or even hire a piano and a globe if you so wished.

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At No.1 was the Royal Baths, so called due to its royal patronage of the Duchess of Kent and her daughter Princess Victoria. Here you could partake in a number of tempting treatments including shampooing, aromatic baths, sulphur baths, borage baths, nitro-muriatic acid baths, douches and showers. You will notice if you cast your gaze skywards that this building has one more chimney than the other houses, this was to vent the pore-cleansing steam of the mineral and vapour baths, and according to rumour the Turkish bath is still down there in the basement.

There was Miss Lucas's Fancy Goods shop at No.2, Estate Agents at No.6 and No.17, and an Ornamental Painter at No.5.

Mr and Mrs Davis's Tailor shop at No.13 provided all one would need in millinery and dresswear of the time.

Wise's Tunbridge Ware Manufactory had a retail outlet on the Promenade, specialising in Tunbridge Ware and print publishing.

No.7 housed the Royal Victoria Bazaar, selling grooming merchandise such as shaving cakes, cologne, toothpicks and teeth. Yes, teeth!

This meagre handful of shops was all that managed to fill the seventeen spaces of the Promenade though because within just a couple of years the promenade as a shopping destination began to fall out of favour.

Some details of the Promenade's roof, notice how delicate the pillars are.

It wasn't long before the buildings begun being taken over by lodge-keepers, the band stopped playing on sunny days and the fountain stopped flowing. After a few more years just the Baths, the Library and Mrs Cockson’s Catholic Bookstore remained and the rest of the crescent had been converted to residential space. By 1847 just the Royal Baths remained.

It was said at the time that the reason for this decline was that it became a little too popular with "outsiders" so the well-heeled simply shopped on The Pantiles instead. What's not known though is who these outsiders were and from how far they came. It is more likely that these shops, like today, are just a little too far from the main shopping areas of town.

Plan of Calverley Promenade, note the bandstand on the green.

Today the pediment of the library has gone, as has its signage, as have any shops, but it has lost none of its charm and beauty. Now this long curvaceous colonnade is completely residential and highly sought-after. It’s just a pity that the pretty side doesn’t get seen as much as it should.

Calverley New Town: The Lodges

Over a series of posts I thought I'd take the time to discover and share a bit about one of the most historic and dominant parts of Tunbridge Wells, Decimus Burton's Calverley New Town.

I thought I'd start the series with a look at some of the lesser known buildings, the Lodges. What were they and why were they built?

"Gatekeepers being essential for the purpose of keeping out strangers and stray animals", lodges were built at the three entrances to Calverley Park. Not only did these keep out the unwanted but it also ensured that the Park remained exclusive.

They were designed to be beautiful ornamental entrances to the Park, and it was said that the "liveried guardians of privacy, and their wives, must sometimes have rebelled at the inconvenience of a dwelling whose interior arrangements were at the mercy of a classical facade". You can see the guardsmen in the old pictures below in their uniforms, complete with splendid stovepipe hats. One only has to look at Keston Lodge's octagonal layout and Victoria Gate's spare room completely separate from the rest of the house to wonder at how they lived in such quarters.

Victoria Gate Lodge today in 2010.

Victoria Lodge
Victoria Lodge, which is probably the best known of all the lodges, is the principle entrance to the Park and was the first to be constructed as this is the end that the builders started construction of the whole of Calverley Park in the late 1820s.
The Lodge has the honour of being the first object in the world to be named after the young Princess Victoria who was a regular Summer visitor to the Wells.
The Grecian style lodge is comprised of a high Roman carriage arch with a single storey room on each side, their west fronts flanked with fluted Doric half columns supporting a heavy entablature. If you look very closely you will notice that the windows, each in moulded stone surrounds with original glazing bars, are wider at the bottom than at the top, a beautiful detail.
The road-side room of the lodge has had an additional later building with pointed roof attached to extend the living quarters, you can see the original structure in the drawing below.

Victoria Gate Lodge complete with uniformed guardian. Courtesy of John Britton's Descriptive Sketches of Tunbridge Wells and the Calverley Estate.

We can only wonder how splendid the archway looked over 180 years ago as the locally quarried sandstone would have been a wildly different colour, but alas has today faded and been weathered by the passing traffic pollution. It is said that the arch displays some of the engineerial qualities of Decimus's other archways, such as the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner.