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Spring 2008 The proposed frontage to Mount Pleasant - a colonnade of shops with a hotel above ‘Ritz’ Cinema Site A new vision for 2008 see page 8 The entrance to the hotel - halfway up Mount Pleasant - a tiny ‘square’, said to be reminiscent of the Fish Market in the Pantiles 2 Front Cover: The Frohman Memorial in Marlow - see page 14. www.thecivicsociety.org Contents Introduction ... 4 From the Planning Scrutineers ... 5 Notes from Gill Twells. Chairman’s Letter by John Cunningham ... 6 The ‘Ritz’ Cinema Site - a new vision for 2008 ... 8 The winning design for the Cinema Site. Samuel Pepys at the Rhenish Wine House ... 12 John Fuller’s 2008 Kings Charles Lecture. Shadowy Character in Tunbridge Wells? (5,3) ... 14 Did Peter Pan really live here? More on Maps ... 16 Two versions of Kip and where to find some useful maps. A New Surgical Unit for Knights Park? ... 19 Details of another planning application. Local History Group News ... 20 Adopt a Grave ... 23 Forthcoming Events ... 24 Editor: Chris Jones. 52 St James Road, Tunbridge Wells, TN1 2LB Tel 01892 522025 (evenings and weekends) Email [email protected] Secretary: Mrs Pauline Everett. Chenhalls, Glenmore Park, Tunbridge Wells TN2 5NZ. email [email protected] 2008 Newsletter Spring 3 An Introduction by Chris Jones The Cinema Site In Spring 2002 the Newsletter displayed proposals for the re-development of the cinema site - flats, shops and nightclub. Six years later we have a new set of plans - with offices, shops and a hotel. Those who attended the presentation at the Town Hall have given them a guarded approval, but perhaps we are just getting used to the idea - like a friendly home the second time you call. Our main concern is what the new buildings will look like. Please look at the draw- ings on pages 8 to 11 and let us know what you think. Looking Ahead Dr John Cumming was a popular minister of the Presbyterian Church and a keen bee-keeper. He was mainly known to the Victorian public, though, for his prophesies, made during the 1850’s, that the world would end in 1867. His credibility took a bit of a beating when it was discovered, two months before the anticipated Second Coming, that he was negotiating a twenty-one year ex- tension to the lease on his house near Tunbridge Wells. Cumming was only one of a long line of visionaries who have used Scriptural texts to calculate the end of time. John Fuller explained some of the calculations in his King Charles lecture in January. I have attempted to summarise his talk on page 12 below. New Lamps We’ve got some nice new lamp- posts in Crescent Road, but have you seen these amazing structures in the AXA car-park above the Calverley Grounds? There must be at least ten of them. I fear we may be faced in future with all sorts of clumsy designs, on the basis that they are ‘sustainable’ or renewable. 4 www.thecivicsociety.org From the Planning Scrutineers by Gill Twells 69-71 Culverden Park Road - eventually needed. The appeal against The appeal against the refusal of per- the refusal of the second scheme is due mission for the redevelopment of the to be heard in July . site has been allowed. “Brewhouse Hotel “ and “Prehab 17A Boyne Park - We supported a at the Cumberland” We have ob- third proposal for a large new semi- jected to a request for extended Licens- detached pair of houses on this vacant ing hours. site, and are happy that it has received 30 Warwick Park - (former “Grot approval . We gave an award to the de- Spot” ) We have objected to the deep veloper in 2006 for the restoration of excavation of the front garden to pro- Rosemount on Mount Ephraim. vide 2 car parking spaces - the bare Dingley Dell, 1 Rusthall Road - retaining walls and the poor workman- Rather than demolishing this small ship do nothing to alleviate the scar! “Cottage-Ornée” style house on the It is now the subject of a retrospective edge of Rusthall Common, and replac- planning application. ing it with a modern house, we again Land behind Forest Road - We commented that it would be preferable objected - as did TWBC - to the build- to permit a new house on another part ing of an estate of 70 houses behind of the grounds, even though they are Forest Road. The land is in Wealden in the Green Belt. The Planning Com- District so the houses would use mittee refused both the demolition and Tunbridge Wells facilities without pay- the rebuilding, in spite of the disabili- ing Council Tax to TWBC. The appli- ties of the applicant. cation was refused by Wealden DC last Site adjacent to Dunorlan Park - week - they say that they have already A third scheme for a Sunrise Senior allocated enough land for housing. We Living care home, with lower build- understand that the developer, Charles ings, has been proposed. We think this Church, is to appeal immediately. is a further improvement, but have sug- TWBC may be able to block the appli- gested that space for more car parking cation as the access is via Benhall Mill should be identified now, in case it is Road, which is in Tunbridge Wells. 2008 Newsletter Spring 5 Chairman’s Letter We are at the beginning of a 10-15 year period in which, for better or for worse, the face of the centre of our town will change more than it has probably done since the late 19th. century. Three major developers have come to Tunbridge Wells and what they do (subject, of course, to the well-known strong arm of the TWBC Planning Department), will be significant. The first developer is Rydell Ltd ( an English company based in Kingston-on-Thames and a subsidiary of the Cork-based Irish company Padlake Ltd), which is the owner of the Ritz site. Here the news is quite encouraging. Having bought the site for a reputed £8.5 million, it submitted two applications, which were rejected. It decided to enlarge the site by buying further land down Mount Pleasant (as far as Gourmet Burger) and also in Clanricarde Gardens and, in conjunction with TWBC and the South-Eastern Region of the RIBA, announced a competition for a concept (not a detailed) develop- ment of the site, to include an 100+ bedroom, 3-4* hotel or alternatively residential units; a minimum of 7,000 sq. metres of retail space and 6,000 sq. metres of offices. (It is perhaps invidious to say that the Civic Society suggested such a competition for the site in 2002 and 2006, a suggestion which was rejected on both occasions as ‘taking too long’ and ‘being too complicated’.) Six architectural practices – four from Lon- don, one from TW and one from Hythe - entered the competition and on 27th. February, the winner was announced – Panter Hudspith of London S.E.1. Their presentation (which incidentally used, without acknowledgement, two maps from the RTWCS ‘His- torical Atlas of Tunbridge Wells’) was unanimously judged the best. Your Vice-Chairman, Alastair Tod, and I were invited to attend the announcement and subsequent presentation. We concluded that we liked the planning concept which seemed to reflect more of the character and style of Tunbridge Wells than any previous application we had seen. We liked the setting back of the building from Church Road to produce a better vista towards Holy Trinity; the limiting of storeys to a maximum of five above ground and only half the frontage onto Mount Pleasant (which will make it in scale much less overbearing than the neighbouring Wellington Gate); the use of a colonnade on Mount Pleasant Road to provide more style and also weather protec- tion; the setting back of the hotel entrance to form a small courtyard in front; the provision of a courtyard garden in the centre of the site, which hopefully will not be entirely for private use. We still have a concern about the external finish of the build- ing (the choice of brick, stone, stucco, concrete, with plate glass firmly rejected) which has yet to be decided when this concept design is turned into a finished design for planning approval. Despite its 400 years, the character of the buildings in Tunbridge Wells is essentially late Victorian – look at the other side of Mount Pleasant Road and also Church Road – and that should mean stucco. The second developer is the new Development Partner for TWBC appointed on 29th. December 2007 from 21 applicants and six short-listed organizations. The new Partner is itself a partnership between John Laing plc ( the British construction and infrastructure operator taken over by the German insurer, Allianz, in October 2006 6 www.thecivicsociety.org for over £950 million) and Glendale plc (which is a support services provider for the public and private sectors). These two companies have formed a separate Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) to work as the Development Partner with TWBC on the ‘regeneration’ of four town centres in the Borough, namely Tunbridge Wells, Southborough, Paddock Wood and Cranbrook. TWBC see this as a partnership with a 10-20 year timescale. TWBC insist that it will retain full planning powers over all development of what TWBC says is a £90 million property portfolio. Detailed propos- als are expected by February 2009 (less than a year away) with consultations and representations being made and accepted up to January 2010 and with the adoption of the final proposals between February and April 2011. Our concerns are that Town Centre development inevitably means retail develop- ment above all, with little attention to other social and economic issues; that while Southborough, Paddock Wood and Cranbrook have relatively well-defined and com- pact town centres, Tunbridge Wells does not, and the definition of its town centre seems to be from the Kent & Sussex Hospital down to the Pantiles, with no consideration of other important areas such as St.

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