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.

The TW Project Goes Live!

Have you ever wondered what’s behind that door? What’s inside there? What’s underneath there? Where does that go? Well wonder no longer because today, finally, we are delighted to announce the launch of The Tunbridge Wells Project.

Basement tunnels aplenty underneath the Opera House.

Our ongoing lifetime project aims to document the buildings of Tunbridge Wells for historic posterity and the first wave of images is now online.

David Bartholomew and I have been truly amazed at the level of courtesy given to us by Tunbridge Wells Borough Council and all the other owners of the properties we have visited so far and for that we thank them profusely. Our aim is to add every building in Tunbridge Wells to this Project so please spread the word and visit the site often to catch new updates, perhaps even sign up for our newsletter to be informed when new buildings and images get added.

Behind the scenes at The Crematorium.

David and I will be hosting a launch party for the Project on Thursday the 21st of April at Trinity Theatre and invites and times will be announced on Twitter via my account here, David's account here and our Project account here so please keep your eye open for them.

Please click here to visit and explore the project and don't forget to come back here and tell us what you think.

The Power List 2011

Just a short quick post to welcome those lovely local people who may have read the Courier Newspaper's Most Powerful People in Tunbridge Wells List today and are visiting for the first time.

If you've never visited this blog before (why not, I've been here since 2005) then why not stay a while and read back through all of our years of posts about Tunbridge Wells or perhaps have a little delve into the archive. If you're feeling brave and would like a view of our town from my wife's perspective then perhaps check out Mrs Anke's Ladybits. We have lots of other sections to the blog too such as restaurant, book and coffee reviews.

You can also have a look through my Ritz Cinema Project.

If you haven't read the paper yet and want to find out who the other 19 people who made the list this year are, you can either pop out to your local newsagent to buy a copy, or if you're like me and really can't wait, you can even now buy copies online in PDF format, by clicking here.

There's also a sneak preview of the list over at our Facebook Fan Page.

So Advert

Just a short quick post today to show off my lovely new print advert running in this month's So Tunbridge Wells magazine, and to also welcome those lovely local people who may have seen the advert and are visiting for the first time.

Latest issue of So Tunbridge Wells magazine, even Anne Hathaway might pay us a visit.

If you are a newbie here then why not stay a while and read back through all of our years of posts about Tunbridge Wells or perhaps have a little delve into the archive. If you're feeling brave and would like a view of our town from my wife's perspective then perhaps check out Mrs Anke's Ladybits.

The space for the advert was kindly donated to us by local philanthropist, Matt Sankey of Sankey's Pub, Seafood Brasserie & Fishmongers fame. Here are a few photos of the advert but it would be much better if you popped out and picked up your own copy to see it in the flesh. Available all around town or online.

New Project Coming Soon...

Hello everyone, firstly many apologies for the lack of updates in the past month but there is a reason I have been too busy to post.

Together with fellow photographer, David Bartholomew, and some other friends, we have been frantically working away on a new historic project for Tunbridge Wells.

We'll just leave you with this teaser. More news and updates soon.

I'll leave you with this teaser for now but stay tuned for more details and updates soon, I promise it’ll be worth it. In the meantime why not follow our Twitter account to get instant updates.