Calverley Grounds, Tunbridge Wells, Kent

It's several years since I or Mum had visited Tunbridge Wells and we spent a very pleasant day there today. There is a huge amount of things to photograph there as there are many interesting old buildings and an impressive amount of street furniture dotted about - on a par with Brighton. Calverley Grounds originally belonged to Mount Pleasant House where the young Queen Victoria stayed with her mother, The Duchess Of Kent. The house was later converted into a hotel by the architect Decimus Burton (1800-1881) who designed a lot of buildings in the town. One of his churches, Holy Trinity now an arts centre, has an amazing range of carved heads which are worth seeking out. Similar heads can be seen at Goring Parish Church near Worthing which he rebuilt. In 1920, the Grounds were bought by the Borough Council and laid out as a public park with gardens.

Tunbridge Wells is the Spa Town of Kent on the same lines as Cheltenham, Bath and Royal Leamington Spa though probably not as grand as the first two, and lies on the border with East Sussex. It today serves as a busy shopping and employment centre. On the main railway bridge before the famous Pantiles are reached, is a bronze Coat Of Arms with the motto "Do Well, Doubt Not" which I quite like. Many of the town's older buildings and boundary walls are constructed of ashlared blocks of Tunbridge Wells Sandstone. This is the oldest formation of the Cretaceous System and occurs throughout most of the Weald of Kent and Sussex extending westwards as far as Horsham (to just as stone's throw from where I work in fact!). It is a good hard and easily worked sandstone and the houses of Calverley Park Crescent on the horizon in this picture are built of this very same stone.