Parks and Landmarks
The Pantiles and its chalybeate spring have been the landmarks most readily associated with Royal Tunbridge Wells ever since the founding of the town, though the 5 metres (16 ft) high steel Millennium Clock at the Fiveways area in the centre of town, designed by local sculptor Jon Mills for the Millennium celebrations, stakes a claim to be a modern landmark.
Tunbridge Wells contains green spaces that range from woodland to maintained grounds and parks. The most substantial areas of woodland are the Tunbridge Wells and Rusthall Commons, which comprise 250 acres (0.39 sq mi; 1.0 km2) of wood and heathland and are close to the centre of the town. Open areas of the common are popular picnic spots, and there is a maintained cricket ground situated next to Wellington Rocks.
Located in the town centre opposite the railway station, Calverley Grounds is a historic park with ornamental gardens and a bandstand (now demolished). The park was part of Mount Pleasant House – which was converted into a hotel in 1837 – until 1920 when the Borough Council purchased it for the town. The bandstand dated from 1924 and was damaged by an incendiary bomb in 1940 and parts of the metalwork were sold for scrap metal. The subsequently repaired bandstand and the adjacent pavilion were intended to form part of a new centre to the park but were never completed. The bandstand was demolished in 2010 although the pavilion still exists as a cafe. Just inside the entrance to the park coming from the station is a memorial to Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, hero of the Battle of Britain, who lived and died in Tunbridge Wells.
Dunorlan Park, at 78 acres (0.122 sq mi; 0.32 km2) the largest maintained green space in the town, was once a private garden that was part of the millionaire Henry Reed's now demolished mansion, and only passed into public possession in 1941. The gardens were designed by the renowned Victorian gardener James Green, but over the years they became overgrown, making it hard to distinguish the full scope of Marnock's design. In 1996 Tunbridge Wells Borough Council applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a grant to restore the park in line with the original designs, and in 2003/4 Dunorlan underwent a £2.8 million restoration. The River Teise rises in the park, and two dams on it have created a pond and a boating lake. Dunorlan is listed as Grade II on English Heritage's National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
The oldest public park in Royal Tunbridge Wells is Grosvenor recreation ground, located close to the town centre.(Quarry Road) It was opened in 1889 by Mayor John Stone-Wigg, on the land that was formerly Caverley Waterworks. The park was designed by landscape architect Robert Marnock. The lake area with dripping wells remains, but the other lakes, bandstand and open air pool have all gone. There is a bowls club, cafe, toilets and children's play area, including cycle track. It is adjoined by the Hilbert recreation ground, parts of which have been designated as a local nature reserve by the Kent High Weald Partnership; these include Roundabout Woods and the adjoining grass areas.The Hilbert Recreation Ground was donated to the town by Cllr Edward Strange in 1931, on the site of the form John Beane's Charity Farm. There are two football pitches, built as part of the King George V playing fields scheme, and a skatepark.
The Salomons Museum preserves the home of Sir David Salomons, the first Jew to serve as Lord Mayor of London and the first non-Christian to sit in Parliament. It preserves the bench from which Salomons rose to speak as the first Jewish MP ever to speak in Parliament.
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Famous quotes containing the words parks and, parks and/or landmarks:
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings—crowded, active, thick.... But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow’s horizons are vague and its demands are few.”
—Larry McMurtry (b. 1936)