Anke: Royal Tunbridge Wells

Most Haunted

It's been too many weeks since David and I met up to take some pictures for our Project and this one was to be quite a scary one.

The "ghosts" of the pump room. David's photograph.

Our shoot for the day would be in The Retreat public house on Church Road. This building wasn't always a public house though.

The building first appears on an 1808 map but is just listed as a Lodging House of Mr Morley. Records show that it was a lodging house between 1740-1780. In 1821 it was listed as a hotel and by the 1950s it had become a pub. But it's the period of the mid 19th Century that had us both so intrigued as to want to pay this place a visit.

Back in the mid 1800s the building was used as our town's magistrates court and hearings were held here every fortnight. The building contained cells within the basement to hold the prisoners and rooms to hold the bodies of those who were hanged on the Common for their crimes before their corpses were taken to the funeral house (Sadly, this claim cannot be established with any written text, yet).

David and I opened the creaky door to the cellar and climbed down below to check out what was left of the cells.

The stairs down into the darkness of the cellar.

The photo at the top of this post shows what is now the pump room of the pub. The alcoves in this room are where prisoners would be shackled to the walls with irons. Today we may be larking about being convicts but it really couldn't have been much fun being chained up down here. We had really had quite enough after about half an hour. Apparently psychics have been in here and "seen" people in these alcoves. It's rather eerie to imagine that we were probably being watched whilst shooting these images. David was rather spooked upon hearing the scraping of boxes across the floor whilst in here but nobody else was there. The photo below is a crop of one of David's photographs in this room, can you explain the strange apparition?

Well, can you explain it?

The room in the photo below is apparently one of the scariest rooms down here, and one that has a lot of people feeling intense discomfort. This room has the appearance of a cell with the door now missing and this is most likely the area where they stored the dead bodies. We were both alarmed by three loud knocks when standing in this room. There was nobody there with us. Or was there?

The body/bottle storage room.

The photo below shows an archway that is said to be an entrance to tunnels. There is another archway directly opposite this in another room and we know that goes next door as we have been there on the other side. Alas we have no idea where the entrance in the photo below goes, this one needs some more research.

One of the archway entrances to the tunnels?

The room opposite this one has some original woodwork and brick shelving which could well be where the gaoler stored the irons, keys or torture devices. Although it was probably for his paperwork and lunch that his wife had made him. Click on through to the project to see the rest of the images showing this room.

It's said that the staff never look back when locking up down in the cellar as there is a horrible feeling of someone following you. We, of course, looked back but unfortunately nobody was there.

This building seems to have the most ghostly tales I have heard of in Tunbridge Wells. The staff were regaling us with all the things they had seen, such as the shadows that appear to walk through the bar to the back door but belong to no body, objects flying around and the many tales of the haunted stairs. These really get your goosebumps bumping. There isn't room to list them all here so if you want to hear them then you'll have to stay tuned to the blog and watch out for the Tunbridge Wells Ghost Tour coming very soon.

The haunted stairs.

David and I would like to thank The Retreat for letting us in to photograph for the Project. We had a really nice lunch and a beer too so we recommend you should pop in and check them out, you never know who will be sitting next to you at the bar.

Friends Passage*

Little is known about the mysterious passage that lies next to the Ragged Trousers pub on The Pantiles.

Many a tourist, and local alike, have pushed their cheeks up to the bars on the locked gate to try and see what lies beyond. The Pythonesque hand pointing down to "The Crypt" teases you with an enormous temptation to try the lock.

Shown below on a map of 1808, the Hand & Sceptre Hotel is the building to which The Crypt was a part, it was a bar in the cellars and was only accessible via this gate on The Pantiles. The first recorded landlord was in 1824, it changed hands many times over the years until it closed in 1923. For a building that stood on The Pantiles for such a long time, 1800-1923 in fact, there really isn't much information or pictures available, just the occasional Census entry and map reference.

Of course, the most commonly asked question here is why is it named Friends Passage? Well, we think it is named this because in 1739 the house at the back was occupied by Robert Friend, and it was his house that became the back entrance to the Hand & Sceptre Hotel. The main entrance was on London Road.

There are other signs still around today that the Hand & Sceptre once stood here. Remarkably the stables still exist; you probably see them every day and hardly take a second glance, it's the Master Transcription building on the edge of the Common.

To be honest, that's about all we know, unless you know any more and can help me fill in the blanks?

So, there you go, now you know a tiny little more about that creepy passageway next time you peer inside. But, whatever you do, don't peer inside after dark, reports of ghosts walking the courtyard and coming up to the locked gate to rattle it have been heard.

To see more images, drop on by our Tunbridge Wells Project. Thanks go to Catherine Pitt, Tunbridge Wells Tour Guide extraordinaire, for her help in writing and researching this article. *Don't shout at me for the lack of an apostrophe, it doesn't have one on the sign.

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?

Milestone

This was an intriguing find, mainly because I have passed this spot hundreds of times and never once spotted this great stone was here. Looking like a standing stone placed by an ancient civilisation this is actually an old milestone pointing towards London on the old route the horse and carriages used to take. Carved from local sandstone and dating back to the early 1800's, it originally indicated the 36 miles along the turnpike roads to London but unfortunately is now weathered to an illegible but nonetheless intriguing pattern of markings.

Click image for larger view.

The building the old stone sits next to, now called the Master Transcriptions Studio, was the site of Bennett's Wagon Office, a stage coach stop where the horses could be rested and watered in the course of their journey from The Wells to London, Hastings and Rye. From here the horses would gallop the 36 miles to the Nag's Head Inn in Southwark along Major York's Road.

Major York's Road, is exactly what it's name suggests, being built by Major Martin Yorke, who retired to Tunbridge Wells rich from his service in the East India Company, to connect his house at the top, now the Spa Hotel, to The Pantiles at the bottom. It became one of the busiest roads into town carrying the visitors to and from London, the toll gate for this route was in Rusthall.

The most intriguing tale of all about this unremarkable stone is the ghostly figure of a young girl dressed in a plain Georgian costume that is occasionally seen sitting atop it, is she waiting for a carriage to go to London or perhaps someone to return to The Wells on one? Keep your eye on it next time you're passing after dark.

Spooky Goings On

T'is the eve of All Hallows' Day, and the ghosts and ghoulies are preparing themselves for a night of fright, and probably most of the town's children too. But, do you want a real fright? Then get yourself out with one of our towns many ghosts. The 20-odd that live on the Pantiles will have enough to do with the tourists but there are a couple more in more quieter parts of town to give you a chill. Consider Woodbury Park Road where in the mid-1800's there was a orphange which was sadly raized to the ground with many of the children being burnt alive inside. Legend has it that one of the staff gathered the children together in a room and had them sing as the building burnt, since there was no hope for escape and to try to stop the children from panicking. Some evenings you can still hear their singing drifting on the air. In the same road, at number 21, there has been numerous sightings of a "grey lady" in victorian attire who appears, its thought she is the teacher that gathered the children together in chorus.

Not far away, many years ago, a man walking home along a narrow overgrown path from Broomhill Road heard the sound of horses' hooves and on turning around was astonished to see the headless figure of a rider in plated armour bearing down on him. It's been said that the figure could well have been that of one of Cromwell's cavalry soldiers, as they occupied the area during the Civil War. As to the reason why the horseman was headless, the answer can only be conjectural. Perhaps the soldier had been killed in a skirmish with a group of Royalists or, as has been suggested, his head was knocked off by an overhanging branch as he sped through the forest.

On the same road a couple were driving along and, approaching a bend too quickly, thought they had run over a figure on the verge. The figure was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't until a local man revealed that some 70 years earlier a cottage had existed at the exact bend in the road where the phantom had been that the couple realised the similarities. The buildings had lain empty and derelict for many years before being demolished because "potential buyers were scared away by the ghost of a man who haunted the place". The owners of the place claimed that the "cottage is haunted by a man in a grey suit". The same figure seen by the couple was on the exact spot where the cottage had been. Proof that the building doesn't have to exist for the ghosts to still haunt.

Feeling brave? Don't believe the tales? Dare you take a walk at the witching hour? Let me know how you get on. Happy Halloween.