Anke: Royal Tunbridge Wells

The Shiny New 2012 Blog Design

Well, this is sure to ruffle a few feathers but here we go. Welcome to the new 2012 design for our blog. Now before you dive on that comments button and start hammering that keyboard, allow me to explain my thought process.

That mysterious blue door on Mount Sion.

Over the past seven years and many hundreds of posts I have always tried to carefully, although it may not seem it, craft the way that text sits on the screen. Therefore to try and retain this I decided to keep the text width as it was before, at 500 pixels. The photographs are now over 50% larger at 769 pixels wide, don't ask, people love bigger pictures.

"room to plop in some quotes"

This therefore leaves a 261 pixel white space, but fear not this shall not be wasted, for this is perfect for sitting reasonably large portrait images in, after all you don't want a 769 pixel wide portrait image as you'd need to scroll for a week. It also creates heavenly white space to give everything room to breathe. It also leaves room to plop in some quotes so you don't have to read everything and can just glance the quotes to get the gist of what's going on. Although be warned, if you don't read every word I write then I will find out and will be in touch.

I decided to forgo the large amount of information that used to sit over there on the right, I felt this detracted from the words in the actual posts, which are the most important on the page. To further enhance the main text I made the sidebar over there a lighter shade of black, or grey as some people call it. Some of the information that was over there can be found at the very bottom of the screen underneath King Charles the Martyr Church.

Well that’s it, I hope you like it, I hope it will enhance your reading pleasure. Please bear with me whilst some pages might not look quite right as I am tweaking bits as I go along with your feedback and also I have to go and manually resize everything. Right, go on then, let me have both barrels in the comments.

RVP Construction Archive

I have recently been visiting and chatting to a very generous owner of lots of Tunbridge Wells photographs spanning many years. I will share them all with you eventually but thought I'd tease you with one of many hundreds I have scanned this week of the construction of Royal Victoria Place.

Can you see the façade of RVP in Market Square?

This image is from a selection taken from the tallest crane during the construction works. Health and Safety was as invasive back then as it is today so the only way to get these images was to buy the crane driver a pint of whiskey and a disposable camera. Putting the whiskey to one side for later the driver climbed out of his cab onto the boom of the crane and began scanning the site and taking photographs. These really offer a unique perspective of the site.

Once I have worked out how, I will be sharing these many hundreds of unique photographs with you all so stay tuned!

Richard Bellars: 100 Hours of Magic

There is something magical happening in Market Square, Royal Victoria Place. No Santa Claus is not coming to town, Richard Bellars, the local magician who fooled Penn and Teller, is undertaking 100 hours of non-stop magic. Yes, 100. One hundred. Yes, non-stop. No sleep at all.

The stunt is being done to raise money for the restoration of the Royal Victoria Hall Theatre in Southborough which is being threatened with closure.

The theatre has been entertaining the community for 112 years and to see it closed down during our lifetime is unthinkable. Please help The Friends of Royal Victoria Hall by visiting the magic show and by donating and sponsoring Richard during this 100 hour marathon.

You can see a live feed of the action here but it's much better to pop along and see it for yourself, you can even take part. How cool is that!

I'll try and visit the show every now and again over the next 100 hours and will update this gallery page.

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!

Calverley Grounds Concept

Whilst randomly googling about I stumbled across a rather intriguing website and I just had to share it. It turns out that after a quick email, the owner, Grant Beerling, is a really nice chap and agreed to share some of the details with all of us.

Click image for much larger version. Copyright Grant Beerling.

Grant, the owner of a local garden design company, designed this wonderful concept of Calverley Grounds for his BA in Landscape Architecture. He calls it “a complete fantasy project, throwing in various ideas and theories of how people use and move through a public space.”

Click image for much larger version. Copyright Grant Beerling.

I say that this could become something better than a fantasy. It could, nay should, be a reality. You only have to pore over some of the delicious details to realise why. Notice the bridge crossing over Mount Pleasant to connect to the future shopping centre on the Ritz Cinema site, it even has planting and seating. How about the new concert bowl with its view over the lake for wonderful summer performances. How about the waterfall with a café underneath? How about the tunnels and ravine walks carved into local sandstone? All utterly gorgeous ideas.

Click image for much larger version. Copyright Grant Beerling.

Grant produced a few differing concepts on his way to the final design, I've included a few here to show you some more of his great ideas he had along the way. underimage Grant’s early concepts had ways of keeping the AXA PPP building.

“The big idea is to reconnect Tunbridge wells with the Park (known as the grounds really needs to changed as it conjures up the wrong picture as one thinks of sport, not leisure). So when some one says Tunbridge Wells they would think Calverley Park. Connect with people and their every day life, whether using its direct routes as a more pleasant walk from one end of town to another or stopping for a cup of coffee and a rest whilst admiring the views, promising to come back another day to explore further. Connect Business so that they have a vested interest in the park staying well maintained (through Business rates). Concert venue, water and ice, fantastic planting scheme, restaurants, circular walk/run, all designed to pull visitors and regulars into the park. It should be part of the day when in Tunbridge Wells.”

The bridge over Mount Pleasant. Copyright Grant Beerling.

Even though Grant states “[I] love the Tunbridge Wells Town Hall, and actually like the Axa Building opposite…", the AXA PPP building has had to make way for his bold concept. The existing Mount Pleasant Avenue car park has also been sacrificed to extend the park. The extension of the park is a fabulous, if ambitious, idea that provides a traffic-free walk from Crescent Road all the way down the hill to the bottom of Mount Pleasant. You can also see that the bottom of Mount Pleasant Avenue has been tree-lined to give pedestrians a much safer route into the park from the main road. Admittedly this might make it a little tough for cars entering the BBC car park here but it could be done.

“One concept that is really is important (to me at least) is the two park idea, the upper area for short stay (lunch time crowd, and the lower area for a longer stay i.e. to be explored). So the upper area for sitting, eating, and people watching when time is short.”

The bridge over Mount Pleasant. Copyright Grant Beerling.

With the current plans for bringing water back to The Wells (more on this later), this fabulous concept would really bring it back with a huge bang.

Finally, Grant says he needs "just need £20million to build it..... offers welcome.” So, £20m divided by the number of local residents = £354 each. Pricey but oh so worth it. What do you think of Grant's concepts?

Click image for much larger version. Copyright Grant Beerling.

Many thanks to Grant for allowing me to share his concepts. You can see many more pictures on his concept website. Best of luck with the garden design business, Grant, and I hope you manage to build this one one day.