Anke: Royal Tunbridge Wells

Before the Town Hall

It's no secret that the Council are considering abandoning the current town hall site and relocating to smaller premises, which does actually make me both happy and sad.

I'm happy that the current building will become something new and hopefully open to the public. I'm crossing my fingers for a giant extension of the museum and art gallery. Are you reading Mr Mayor?

I'm sad also but perhaps not for the reasons you might be thinking. It actually makes me feel sorrow for the building that once stood on the site, before the town hall existed, and ask myself if there really was a need to destroy it for the current building.

The original buildings were designed and built by the great Decimus Burton between 1827 and 1841 and I think you'll agree from the picture below that they are magnificent to behold. The Terrace consisted of four detached double villas, and a Parade of twelve houses, all faced with stone. There were pleasure grounds before each range of houses, private gardens behind, and stables and a mews beyond them. Luckily two still survive to this day, number nine and ten just tucked away next to the police station. Go have a look at them and wonder what a whole line of them would look like.

You can perhaps sympathise a bit more with my woe when you see the next photographs of workmen demolishing the row of buildings around 1938, not even a hundred years later.

Demolishing in progress.

Loading up all the stone into wagons.

Decimus' great terrace is razed to the ground.

Back to the open ground of pre-1827.

The Terrace was a row of very grand houses and were palatial homes of the very wealthy people of the day, the 1881 Census showing a doctor, a retired Captain, clergyman and the rest filled with rich owners living off of dividends.

When the Terrace was built in 1827 many local residents weren't pleased with it, with several complaining to the local newspaper about the huge imposing stone walls. The residents may have had a point at the time, because even though Calverley Terrace looks beautiful to us today from these old images, when you consider what was there before Decimus put pencil to paper, it is quite a difference. For before Decimus arrived there was a lonely house sitting in a huge meadow sitting atop Mount Pleasant (see map below). The building was called Lanthorn House and was owned by some rather special people over the years, including the Reverend Gordon, rector of Speldhurst and Thomas Beeching the banker who eventually sold it to the planners for the Terrace.

Click the image above to see a larger version.

There is today a small nod to the past to the great Lanthorn House by way of a small mews lane called Lanthorne Mews. Look out for it when you next walk to the theatre ;)

I'll leave you with a quote I discovered "Had the town not demolished the stylish houses and villas of this town planner, Tunbridge Wells would be the tourist attraction of the South East."

Giant Billboards

I hope you'll excuse me for blogging about this one but I thought I'd share my delight with you all about one of my photographs being used by the Yellow Pages for an advertising campaign in the local area. So far I have found two of the 25 billboards that display my photograph of The Pantiles. What do you think, pretty cool huh?
Have you found any more?

Click the image above for a larger view.

Stained Christmas at Trinity

I had the great privledge a few weeks ago to be invited to Trinity Church to shoot a photograph for their 2009 charity Christmas card. It turned out to be a rare honour indeed as the shot was to be of the great stained glass window behind the stage, something that very few people get to see, at least from the inside.

After a brief tour behind the scenes in the projection room I was left alone in the dark with the great window before me,which had been revealed by lots of hard work by the staff in peeling back most of the stage and workings. For a while I found it quite tranquil to stand in the darkened empty theatre and look into the bright coloured glass and contemplate my shot. But I was there to do a job so I then set about photographing all the intricate details of the windows, which I thought could also act as a historical record seeing as though the window spends most of its life hidden.

As you can see from the photographs here, which are like the one on the Trinity charity Christmas card, the colours are amazing and in stark contrast from the view outside.

The window was created by Joseph Hale Miller, who was one of the pioneers of the revival of medieval techniques of stained glass design and construction in the early 19th century, that is the process of piecing together bits of coloured glass with strips of lead rather than just painting the glass.

I feel very proud of my photographs and am very grateful to the staff of Trinity in allowing me the chance to shoot the window so please consider popping into Trinity this Christmas to buy a few of your cards for friends and family, although don't get one for me, I have enough :)

For a couple more pictures of the window, including some detailed close-ups, please visit my Flickr page here.

Sunrise on a New Panorama

There I was so excited about the release of another local book by our Civic Society that I was up and about before the bookshop had opened, in fact I was up before the sun had even come up.
I decided to not waste time sitting around so left the house quietly and took a walk to photograph the sunrise.

Sunrise over Royal Tunbridge Wells. Is there anything more beautiful? Click for larger.

There was also another reason why I wanted to take a photograph this morning, and it was to do with the new book. You see, the latest publication from the Civic Society is called "Historic Panoramas of Royal Tunbridge Wells", and I wanted to create my own panorama in celebration.
After getting the book and enjoying a great read, it turns out that I took my panorama from a very popular spot, as more than half of the historic images inside are taken from the top of Mount Ephraim.
The book is another beauty from the Society with lots of details about some of the most famous images of our town. What's especially great is that I own a few of them and it really helps to identify certain points of interest in them.
Click here to buy the book and see for yourself.
And here without further ado, here is my celebratory panorama, click on it for the full large wide-screen experience.

Panorama of Mount Ephraim. Click for larger.

Pop Goes The Bus

Usually I wouldn't blog about a bus arriving in town, but this was no ordinary bus. This was the Godfather of British Pop Art, Peter Blake's, Art Bus. Intrigued? Well, the Art Bus is a gallery on wheels designed by the famous Sergeant Pepper artist along with the CCA Galleries in London. It's strikingly decorated with colourful pop art on the outside and filled on the inside with works of Peter Blake's art.

Parked in the grand surroundings of the Spa Hotel, the brightly painted double-decker bus looked brilliant in the sunshine and had attracted a throng of followers.
Our special tour of the bus was for 2:15, and after meeting a few friends in the swanky champagne bar, we climbed aboard.

Inside we were met with nothing that resembled your average commuter workhorse, gone was your usual schoolkid graffiti and there instead was bright white ceilings, wooden floors and led lighting, chromed hand rails curved up the staircase and a plush blue seating area was scattered with union jack and mod cushions.

Everyone raced to the top deck, as we used to as kids, where the whole space had been turned into another gallery with collections of vibrant pop art and the back of the bus had been cut away to reveal an outdoor balcony which proved very popular given the Indian summer we were having.
I love these small cultural nuggets that crop up every now and again in town. Where will the next one be?

Want to see more? Click here to see the entire gallery from the visit.

Black in the Pink

With news that another coffee shop has sprung up here in town to add to our already rather large embarrassment of riches, I thought I'd look back at the history of the coffee shop in Tunbridge Wells.

We have to go way back in history, back to some of the very first buildings ever built here in fact. Two buildings of the earliest time were situated on The Pantiles in a small alley known as Pink Alley, a rather salubrious and sometime licentious hive of activity in the 17th Century. The two establishments in question were built in 1636 to satisfy the demands of visitors who were taking the waters, and were known respectively as the Ladies' and Gentlemen's Coffee Houses (one of which is pictured below). These were places that men and women would gather to socialise, although perhaps not usually together, read the newspapers and generally swap the news of the day whilst sipping on a nice hot cup of coffee. The gentleman's house was also called "The Pipe Office" where the men would gather to hire a pipe and indulge in the newly introduced habit of tobacco smoking.

These places were really the central hub of social activity in the area and were seen as an essential part of community life.

One can only wonder what the coffee of the day tasted like. It was said that the dark liquid resembled "syrup of soot or essence of old shoes", so I would think it wasn't that good, although another contemporary statement reads 'Tis extolled for drying up the Crudities of the Stomack, and for expelling Fumes out of the Head. Excellent Berry! which can cleanse the English-man's Stomak of Flegm, and expel Giddinesse out of his Head", which actually sounds quite nice.

One of these coffee houses was said to be the residence of Mrs. Humphreys, the original water-dipper, who passed away in 1678 at the grand old age of 102 thanks to the spring waters and probably not the coffee.

The two buildings survived until 1842 when they were demolished so that surrounding properties could be made larger. Such a shame, can you imagine how wonderful it would be to pass the time away with an espresso and a newspaper in the coffee shop picture above?

It is stated in many online texts and history books that the first coffee shops in England were either 1650 or 1652, was ours before that? Could Tunbridge Wells lay claim to the very first coffee shop in England? Could the history books be re-written?

Question is though, what's your favourite coffee shop today?

The Many Faces of Royal Tunbridge Wells

Following news from a regular reader of this blog of the recent restoration of the NPI clock on Camden Road, I thought it would be a nice idea to make a bit of a list of my favourite public clocks, starting with the wonderful squirrel-adorned clock of NPI, who moved their head office to Tunbridge Wells back in 1966.

NPI Squirrel Clock

The beautiful gold-emblazoned NPI clock is connected to a socket in an office inside the building and whilst the building was empty for some years the switch had been turned off so passers-by could never see the right time. A keen-eyed reader saw an old photograph of the mayor of the time cutting a ribbon for the new building and wrote to the Town Hall requesting that someone officially ask for the clock to be switched back on. The mayors secretary did some detective work, pulled a few strings and today the squirrel tells all of us the right time. Why is there a squirrel sitting on top of it? Well he was used in NPI’s famous advertising campaign of the 1980s.

Weisbaden Sundial

The original copper and brass sundial, which was presented to Tunbridge Wells by the town of Wiesbaden in 1973, mysteriously disappeared a couple of years ago and was replaced, again by our twin town, with this lovely shiny new stainless steel one.
The new sundial, which was commissioned by our Council and made by Weisbaden based firm Metallbau Orlob, is an equatorial bow sundial. In this style of sundial the sun hits the gnomon (indicator), which in this case is an arrow which is parallel to the rotation axis of the Earth, causing a shadow to fall on the semi-circular clock face telling you the time. Weather depending of course.

Millennium Clock

This one divides opinion like nothing else. Some like it, some hate it, me personally, I think it’s a great clock but would perhaps be perfect if it was twice the size. You can’t argue it’s a great piece of art.
The 5metre high structure is made of steel and bears fruit in the shape of numbers to represent the passing of time and was designed by local sculptor Jon Mills for the Millennium celebrations.

Payne & Sons Clock

This landmark clock belongs to the famous jewellers and silversmiths, Payne & Sons, one of the oldest families of jewellers in England and can trace its history back to 1790.
Clock House, or 37 High Street, is one of a terrace built by William Willicombe and has been used in several television appearances. The Post Office used the shop as the setting for its national advertising campaign in 1987, British Telecom and John Cleese filmed there too, as did Peter Bowles in Perfect Scoundrels. Unfortunately it seems that this clock is too complex to repair, even for a watch repairer.

Trinity Church Tower

From its white doves resting in the eaves to the hundreds of starlings gathering on its spires, this clock is a meeting place for many and is usually the first clock visitors to the town see as it towers above surrounding structures.
The tower is built from locally quarried sandstone and was restored recently in 2000 thanks to a grant by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

King Charles the Martyr

Ahh, you were thinking of Polly Peachum’s Clock that is sitting atop the roof but the less well know sundial sitting on the wall is my favoured timepiece of the two. The sundial was installed in 1771 to regulate the mechanical clock on the tower above which was installed in 1759. Polly’s Clock (named after the mistress of the donor who donated the £66 to buy it) actually stood motionless for exactly a year in 1997 whilst a new electronic time-keeping governor was added and now the beautiful sundial is just an antiquity.

Railway Station Clock

For many years this clock was unreliable, which for such a prominent and relied upon clock was rather useless. Whenever the seasons changed it took the railway months to change the time. The problem was access, which was dangerous and about 25 years ago British Rail said they could not afford to move the electric socket which was used to change the time. The electrician’s cost was established to be about £150 so there was a small whip round and money was given to British Rail who were sufficiently embarrassed, when pressured with an appearance in the newspapers, to get the socket moved.
A couple of years after this, the clock began to fall into disrepair again, so began another long campaign to Network Rail and TWBC, and today the clock is perfect, painted nicely and works correctly.

Hermes House Clock

This building always captures my gaze when passing along St. Johns Road.
The rather unusual but no less beautiful building used to be a Christian Science Church until becoming the home to the FTA in 1975. I guess all freight set their watches by it.

Western Railway Station Tower Clock

Built to impress arriving travellers, the grandiose West Station was built on the edge of town where there was room to spare, as opposed to the Central Station which was built into a space.

The Pantiles Clock

This much-photographed timepiece was installed in 1924 and was used to advertise the Regency Restaurant.

Salomons Tower

This clock is embedded into the side of a huge water tower which fed the stable block of the great Salomons House, which was complete with its own central heating and mechanical horse feeding system.

Carrs Court Clock

The first clock in town you see if you arrive from the A21, a welcome sight when returning home.

St. Johns Church Clock

In 1896 work began on enlarging and improving the old church to include a new south aisle, a new roof, and moving the tower to its present position. Such was the response to the financial appeal that it was decided to also install a clock.
The works were all completed in Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee year 1897, and the 'Victoria Tower' was dedicated on the national jubilee holiday.

Dandelion Clock

Probably not the most accurate of clocks but always a summer treat on any country walk.

So there you are, you have no excuse to be late for anything with this many faces telling you the time. One thing I did notice is that Mount Sion seems to be clockless, am I right? Do you have a favourite?
I would like to thank Max Lewis for his help and inspiration in this post.

Oddly Oddly Onker My First Conker!

The wife and I were taking a gentle stroll on The Common this morning in the crisp air when we came across a great Autumnal sight, in amongst the pretty brown colours of leaves on the ground were some of the first conkers. On finding your first conker of the season, you should say: "Oddly oddly onker my first conker". This ensures good fortune and the best chances of getting a sixer or more. We scooped them up before any passing kiddies or horses could and hurried home to lace them up.

Does anything else, apart from the trees turning lovely shades of red, yellow and brown, say Autumn more than swinging nuts at each other at a hundred miles an hour?

How else can I join in this life-threatening pastime? You are no doubt asking. Well there are a few things you will need:
Some Conkers (obviously);
Shoelaces (preferably out of your other half's best shoes);
Drill;
Plasters and ointment (inevitable);
Phone number of cab company and local A&E (50:50)

Rules:
The first of two players holds out their conker at arm's length, hanging down, ready to be hit. The string should be wrapped around the hand to stop it being dropped.
They must hold the conker still as the other player tries to hit it, no flinching allowed.



The second player then wraps the string of their conker around their hand, draws it back, takes aim and swings at the other conker for all their might. Runups are not allowed. If the player deliberately moves his or her conker while waiting for it be hit, the other player is allowed another go!
The first player then has a go at hitting the other player's conker and they take it in turns until one victorious conker remains or the other player is injured.

Forget all this political-correct-health-and-safety-namby-pamby nonsense and get out onto the Common, pick a couple of conkers and have a blast! What better excuse do you need for some great fresh air right in the middle of town?

Perhaps we should start the Royal Tunbridge Wells Conker Championships? "Oddly Oddly Oh, My First Go!"

Dancing Girl

This month marks the sad anniversary of the disappearance of the Dancing Girl.
Back in October 2006, in the middle of a quiet Sunday night whilst even the foxes, rabbits and deer were asleep, the beautiful statue of a scantily clad young girl draped in a cloth, holding a tambourine, was gently lifted out of her Grecian Temple home at the top of Dunorlan Park.
The statue, described as "precious and historically significant", was carved in the 1880s by renowned Victorian sculptor William Theed and was gifted to the town by Alderman RD Burslem in 1951.  William Theed was highly regarded and created statues for the Royal Family and has sculptures in St. Pauls Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and on the Albert Memorial in London.
The Dancing Girl's former home is still there to behold though. The magnificently decorated grecian temple is built from Portland stone and a material called Pulhamite which is a mysterious patented anthropic rock invented by James Pulham (1820-98). Pulhamite was used to join natural rocks together or crafted to simulate natural stone features and is very convincing. Amazingly, nothing can ever be built of Pulhamite again as the recipe went to the grave with him a hundred years ago.  Keep your eyes peeled for more instances of Pulhamite around the park.



Its stunning interior paintwork and decoration had been covered up at some point in its history and during the parks restoration it was discovered again when experts carefully stripped back sections of modern paint revealing an intricate painting scheme which was loosely based on the decoration of the ancient Greeks.  Go on get your nose up to the glass and have a look, it really is very beautiful.
Sadly the Dancing Girl is still missing today and her elegant home is empty without her.
Perhaps we should carve someone elses figure into stone as a replacement?

Morrisons Christmas Advert Part VI

Yes I know I promised no more but couldn't resist trying to see Denise Van Outen filming on The Pantiles.
Little did I know that after giving up shooting yesterday she suddenly showed up and it was all captured on video by Jonathan Bolland, who has graciously let me share it with you below. Thanks Jonathan.

Courtesy of Jonathan Bolland.
Alas, no photographs of Denise or Richard tonight, just not enough light and they'd pushed all the audiences too far back for a decent look. Fair enough really, they have a job to do like anyone else and crowds of people probably don't help.
Right, I mean it this time, normal service will resume next week, I hope you enjoyed the coverage of the filming of the advert, I certainly did.
Click images above for larger versions and here for more.
Did you also know that Lulu filmed here a couple of years ago? Click here to see that video.