Anke: Royal Tunbridge Wells

Inside King Charles the Martyr's Roof

You could be forgiven for thinking that these photographs are of some Hollywood fantasy film set. You'd be wrong. This is what lies above the magnificent ceiling of King Charles the Martyr Church.

Inside the roof of King Charles the Martyr.

David and I were invited along for our Tunbridge Wells Project by the Reverend, Robert Avery. He was really excited to share behind the scenes of the church and especially the wonderful world that lies above everybody's heads. Upon climbing the small staircase and into the roof, we were gobsmacked. It's really hard to describe the feeling of walking into the roofspace, all we could think of was it was like a Harry Potter set.

Countless ancient wooden beams aimed at your head at every turn, there were walkways, ladders, nooks, crannies, there was astonishment everywhere. You could see where all the additions had been made to the church over the years. You could even see the delicate handiwork of the craftsmen that created the plaster domes hundreds of years ago.

The ventilation ducting of King Charles the Martyr.

One thing that struck me was the wooden ducting that you can see in the photograph above. It turns out that this is an ancient form of air conditioning. If you go into the chapel and look up you will notice that in some of the domes are small roses, and inside these roses are holes. These holes lead into these wooden tubes and then out to the fresh air. There are small wooden slats to regulate the flow, although you'd have to climb into the roof to do it of course.

One of the ceiling roses, complete with vent hole.

Thank you very kindly to the Reverend and the kind folks who helped show us around this great church. To see the rest of the photographs of the mind-boggling roofspace, the vestry and much much more, then visit the Tunbridge Wells Project. Go now!

York Road Mission

How many of you have walked, or driven, down York Road and wondered just what this building was? Quite a few I imagine.

Well, as part of our Tunbridge Wells Project, we were given privileged access inside to see and discover what this place was about.

The noticeboard outside the Mission.

Sitting tucked back at the beginning of York Road, this elegant Grade II listed building was constructed around 1867 and formed part of a larger estate.

As you can see from the map below, which dates from the same year the building was built, the Mission sits at the end of the garden of Blandford House. There is a fabulous huge copy of this map on the wall in the church that I encourage everyone to go and take a peek at. The reason why a building as substantial as this was constructed at the end of somebody’s garden has been lost over time but there are theories that it was built to use as a billiard room. It is also understood to have been used as an artist's and a photographer's studio at some point, which would make sense judging from the very large windows that fill the inside with light.

1867 map of York Road showing Blandford House and its grounds.

In around 1890 the building was purchased by William Sibthorpe, of the haberdashery store W M Sibthorpe & Sons on Calverley Road, who then turned it into a church for the use of some Christians who had been meeting in other places in town. William Sibthorpe’s son carried on the tradition by arranging lunch-time Bible Studies for men in the period leading up to the Second World War. During the war a shelter was constructed in the basement for use by the congregation during air-raids. This air-raid shelter is still accessible today, albeit under a heavy desk, and then under a few floor tiles, thank goodness there is no need to rush to access it anymore.

The stairs down to the shelter.

The building remained in the Sibthorpe family until 1976 when it was purchased by the newly formed York Road Christian Mission, a Trust created to maintain the building for the use of the congregation and for Sunday Schools. In the past five years, the roof has been extensively repaired and refitted and the exterior has been completely repainted. The interior, however, still requires much work to be done. So, if you can spare a few minutes or pennies why not drop in and contribute to one of our town centre’s finest small buildings.

You can also take a tour inside on our Tunbridge Wells Project, click here to see inside.

The Mortuary Cross

Along with my great friend David, as part of the Tunbridge Wells Project, we were privileged enough to be allowed to see inside, and photograph, the Mortuary Chapel underneath St. Barnabas Church. Whilst under there we were both drawn to the simple wooden cross hanging on the wall, upon further investigation there seems to be more to it than we first thought.

The cross on the wall of the Mortuary Chapel. Click to go to the Project Gallery.

St. Barnabas was built in one of the poorer parts of town but it still attracted a few of the wealthier families to its services. One of these was the Ranking family, they were a medical family and many of them served in the Indian Army.

Captain James Ranking was serving in India with the East Lancashire Regiment and the 26th Punjab Infantry. His language skills whilst there enabled him to work with the Foreign Office in Bushire on the Persian Gulf. Persia wasn't offically involved in the First World War but had a lot of secret agents from both sides stationed there. One such agent was the German, Wilhelm Wassmuss. Wassmuss was attempting to provoke the British Army by stirring up anti-British feeling and laying the foundations of a revolt by forming an army of Tangistani warriors to fight against them.

Wassmuss's intention was to attack the vulnerable British Residency at Bushire which was only lightly defended by inexperienced Indian troops. The Tangistanis, several hundred strong, planned to attack from the East and South, taking the residency by surprise. However, on the morning of July 12th 1915, a Tangistani scouting party was seen advancing across the desert and a small British patrol was sent out to investigate, led by Major Oliphant and Captain Ranking.

The crucifix watches over the Mortuary Chapel and Captain Ranking's cross. Click to go to the Project Gallery.

The patrol unfortunately ran into a far larger enemy force than they could cope with. In the ensuing battle Captain Ranking was mortally wounded and the major died in an attempt to save him. A few of their Indian colleagues survived to get back home to raise the alarm.

The Tangistani raid on Bushire lasted until September 1915 and ended in defeat, and Captain Ranking was buried in the Tehran War Cemetery in Iran.

What is rather special though is that the temporary wooden cross placed over his original burial plot was not destroyed when the permanent stone was erected. Instead, on the 25th May 1928, there was a citation to bring the cross back to England and place it in the Mortuary Chapel of St. Barnabas in his memory. And there it has remained ever since.

You can go and see it for yourself during Heritage Open Weekend this year from the 8th to the 11th of September, and I highly recommend you do, or you can click to see all 450+ photographs in the St. Barnabas Church gallery on the Project website.

Wish You Were Here...I Think

I have been very kindly lent a huge collection of postcards to digitise for the Friends of Tunbridge Wells and Rusthall Commons and for the good of the town by the Chairman of the Friends, John Barber. I am hoping to share the entire collection with you with some surrounding history too at some point in the future.

To whet your whistle in the meantime I give you one of the collection I have scanned so far, an unstamped but rather heavily used postcard of St. Mark's Church on Broadwater Down.

Can you decipher any of the myriad of messages? Why not leave anything you can read in the comments below and together perhaps we can read the whole thing.

Front of the postcard.

Back of the postcard.

Also, if you have any Tunbridge Wells postcards and would like to contribute to an archive of them I am creating then please drop me an email.

Vale Road Methodist Church

There has been some local news coverage lately that has highlighted the plight of the rather splendid Methodist church on Vale Road. It seems that this fabulous structure is to be demolished and turned into a mixture of fashionable apartments and buildings of other uses, including another church intriguingly enough.

The Vale Road Methodist Church basks in the afternoon sun.

I thought I'd better get down there and have a look at the place myself before things took a turn. I was fortunate enough to meet a parishioner and was very kindly taken on a small tour of the building. The fellow had worshipped there for 40 years, he told me of the 1980s refit which put a stage where the altar was, he showed me the small chapel that had been made from the old pieces of another church in Southborough when it was demolished. He guided me around a small selection of photos and drawings on a wall in the corner which showed the church through the years, you could see where the old gallery seating used to be and where they had moved the enormous organ from the ground floor to the second floor. If you've never been to see the church before the organ is worthy of a visit alone, one can only imagine the noise it creates.

A different view of the tremendous church organ.

The most interesting part of my tour was his thoughts on the matter in hand, he was looking forward to his church being replaced by a nice modern building with good heating and a more suitable amount of space for the number of members that the church attracts these days.

A view back towards the entrance.

There does seem to be an argument for a smaller, more modern (read easier to heat) building as the current space is apparently far too large for their needs and costs far too much to maintain.

This isn’t the first time that this holy place has faced this situation. This church you see today has only been here since 1873 and it replaced another church before it, so perhaps the demolition that the building faces today is a natural step in the evolution of the church?

On the 24th of June 1812 the Methodists opened their first chapel here on this site, constructed at a cost of £2,300, £300 of which was for the land. At this time the membership of the church numbered only twenty people, so you can imagine just how ambitious a project it was. It was because of these low attendance numbers that the building was not finally free from debt until 1860, although this was largely thanks to the generosity of local philanthropist Henry Reed, the creator of the Dunorlan Park estate.

Over the years several additions were made to the building, in 1821 and 1839 space was created for use a Sunday School and other organisations. In 1840 the chapel’s seating capacity was increased to accommodate a growing congregation, which you can see in the image below. The final phase of the development of the old chapel took place in 1847, when the interior was extended again rearwards and a new schoolroom was added.

A view of the first chapel complete with poplar trees. The original building was the central two-storey section and the extensions were the one-storey wings. Image courtesy Colbran 1841.

In 1872, the old chapel on the Vale Royal site was demolished together with the loss of four large poplar trees in front, reputed to have been among the finest of their kind in Kent (pictured below).

A view down the central aisle to the altar.

The foundation stones of the church we see today were laid on 20th May. The architect Charles Bell of London, and local builders Willicombe and Oakley constructed the new building in an astonishing twelve months and at a cost of just £5,000 (£230k in today’s money). During the construction, the congregation met in the Great Hall on Mount Pleasant. The new church was opened on 2nd June 1873.

A welcome message every time you sit down.

After a period of uncertainty in the seventies, when the Church faced the possibility of disappearing during a general clearance involving three other churches, it was decided to alter the building to modern needs instead. This adaptation gained the building a Civic Society Award.

In 1980 the Methodist Church decided to sell another of its churches located in Camden Road and together with a refurbishment of the Vale Road church, to combine the two congregations into one. The closing service at Camden Road was held in August 1981, and it is now commemorated by a small space within the Vale Road church called The Camden Chapel (visible on the left of the image above).

I for one really don’t want to lose this wonderful piece of history even if there is a general consensus that does. Alas I fear that this sort of building is just too expensive to maintain and perhaps it’s time for the next step in its development.

The more I read about the Methodists in Tunbridge Wells the more of a great story unravels, I shall explore more of their religion, influence and buildings again soon.

What are your opinions on the plans for the church? Why not leave me your reactions and responses in the comments section below?