The best-known resident of Tunbridge Wells was (and still is) an anonymous one. Many people, even if they know very little about the town, have heard of the newspaper correspondent signing themselves ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’. The picture this conjures is of an irate and red-faced retired colonel taking up his fountain pen to fire off a letter to the newspapers, in which he rails against poor public services, or declining standards of behaviour.

In the nineteenth century and the first half of the 20^th century it was common practice to use a pseudonym when writing to the local newspaper. Some correspondents indicated their status – ‘A ratepayer’, ‘A resident’, ‘A customer’, or ‘A pedestrian’. Others added a bit more detail – ‘An indignant mother’, ‘A lover of waifs and strays’ or, in one case, ‘Another who would bathe regularly’.

In the 1920s and 1930s a number of people writing letters to the Kent & Sussex Courier signed themselves ‘Disgusted’, a signoff which had been used occasionally before, but now became more frequent. Their disgust was aimed at a wide variety of targets. One letter criticised the design of new houses being built at Hawkenbury, which were ‘a blot on the landscape’. Another complained of the din and racket made by three Salvation Army Bands playing across the town on Sunday afternoons, more suited to ‘a typical Bank Holiday on Hampstead Heath’. And a third, from someone claiming be an animal lover, complained of dogs – ‘Dogs in the highways, dogs in the bye-ways, dogs in lanes, dogs in ditches, dogs in the recreation grounds – dogs everywhere. Dogs yapping around all day and sometimes all night’.

In a letter printed in the Courier on 7th September 1928, the subject was traffic. In the period since 1895, when Sir David Salomons organised Britain’s first ever exhibition of motor vehicles at Tunbridge Wells (in the area of town now known as Showfields) the number of cars on the roads had increased rapidly, a development which was not welcomed by everyone.

Traffic in Tunbridge Wells. Still a problem today

The correspondent was clear that the Council were to blame for the problem. ‘It passes my comprehension’ they wrote ‘how our civic rulers have tolerated – I was going to say condoned – the almost daily growth in the nerve-wracking traffic which thunders over our roads’. They had two specific complaints. Firstly the Council had granted over a hundred licences for ‘heavy passenger-carrying buses’ to run on roads that had not been built for such traffic. Secondly they had taken too long to fix a speed limit, and had then set it too high – ‘Thirty miles an hour…is fifteen too much’.

The letter-writer began by thanking Mr Editor ‘for giving so much publicity to the din’ and ended with a request to ‘keep up the agitation……then perhaps the Council will be roused from its slumber’. They signed off – ‘Disgusted, London Road, Tunbridge Wells’.

It is said that during the 1950s the editor of the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser instructed his reporters to fabricate readers’ letters on controversial subjects, because not enough real ones were coming in and the paper was losing ground to the Courier, its main competitor. Some of the reporters signed their letters ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’.

The phrase became more widely known in the early 1960s when it was used as a letter-writing character’s name in ‘Take it From Here’, a popular radio comedy show starring Jimmy Edwards, and in 1978 when the BBC used it as the title for their new viewers’ feedback programme.

Gradually it became fixed in popular culture and it is still widely known. These days any concern expressed by local residents – whether it is the traffic (still a problem), Southeastern’s poor train service, the noise from low-flying Easyjet planes on their way to Gatwick, or even the arrival of Poundland rather than Waitrose in the town – still generates headlines with ‘Disgusted’ somewhere in them. Some of the town’s residents would like to shake off the label, but ‘Delighted of Tunbridge Wells’ doesn’t have the same ring about it.

Notes

• An account of Advertiser reporters being instructed to concoct letters is included in Frank Chapman’s book ‘Tales of Old Tunbridge Wells’.
• ‘Outraged of Tunbridge Wells’ by Nigel Cawthorne, published in 2014, includes examples of (real) letters written to the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser by local residents, including several who signed themselves ‘Disgusted’.

On August 5^th, the day fifteen-year-old Princess Victoria arrived in Tunbridge Wells, the town had a holiday atmosphere. From early morning the streets were packed. Flags flew above many buildings. Church bells rang out. Bands played the national anthem and other patriotic tunes. Finally a troop of yeomanry (volunteer soldiers) rode into town, followed by the royal carriage. Victoria and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, nodded and smiled as a the crowds waved and cheered and a long line of young girls in white dresses scattered flowers on the road in front of them.

Calverley Hotel, previously Calverley House, in 1840. These days it is the Hotel du Vin.

The royal party had rented Calverley House, a large property overlooking Calverley Park, which had been furnished especially. Within an hour of their arrival there was another chance to get a good look at the visitors as they headed out in an open-top barouche, to drive round the town and take a look at the changes since they were last here, six years earlier. In the evening the town was lit up by coloured lamps and illuminated signs, depicting the royal arms and welcoming messages, outside hotels, shops, public buildings and private homes.

Victoria’s diary shows that her time in Tunbridge Wells was taken up with a full programme of horse-riding, music, taking the waters, walking (in the town and in the surrounding countryside), shopping, attending church services, entertaining and paying visits.

Princess Victoria and her mother in 1834

This was a period when her life was strictly regulated by her mother and her mother’s private secretary Sir John Conroy, both of whom hoped to continue controlling her once she became Queen. They made sure she was never alone – everywhere she went the Princess was accompanied by a group of people, usually including her mother, Conroy, one of his daughters, her governess (referred to as ‘dear Lehzen’ in her diary) and Lady Flora Hastings (whom she was not so fond of). Only when she became Queen three years later would she escape this sort of supervision.

Circling the Common was a racecourse, where a meeting was held over two days each summer. On the 21st and 22^nd August Victoria attended this year’s event. An awning, decorated with the royal arms, was provided to stand over her carriage, protecting her from the hot sun. Around it was an arrangement of shrubs and a roped-off enclosure, to prevent curious locals from getting too close. Victoria made a pretty picture in a white muslin pelisse (coat) lined with primrose-coloured silk and a white bonnet trimmed with roses. She stayed for around four hours on each of the two days, giving her a good chance to observe a wide range of her future subjects – including streetsellers, beggars, musicians and actors – relatively close at hand.

Most of the racecourse’s route is still visible as a broad footpath or bridleway.

In recent years there had been drunkenness and fighting at the races, but in 1834 Victoria’s presence meant that they were policed more thoroughly; no gambling booths or encampments were allowed on the common and booths selling food or drink could only be set up by local people. It was also announced that any dogs who strayed onto the course would be destroyed. The event passed off well; over 16,000 people attended and there was little trouble. According to her diary, Victoria was ‘very much amused’.

On November 3^rd, after a stay of almost 3 months, the royal party moved on to take in the sea air at St Leonards. In her final diary entry Victoria wrote: ‘As we came down the common we took a sad parting look at dear Calverly House where we passed such pleasant days. How quickly the pleasant time has flown! I hope the time may not be far distant when we shall revisit dear Tunbridge Wells again. The country is so beautiful about it; and the rides are so delightful and so are the walks’.

Royal Victoria Grove

The following February the people of Tunbridge Wells decided to honour their royal visitor; 132 Elms, Limes and Sycamores were planted in three rows twelve feet apart and named The Queen’s Grove (later known as the Royal Victoria Grove). Victoria was able to inspect it when she made another visit to the town in 1835.

Notes:

• Tunbridge Wells, which had a resident population of 5,929 in 1831, was not a large town at the time of Victoria’s visit. However its population was expanded by large numbers of visitors during the summer months.
• In 1845 the town’s inhabitants petitioned for the annual race meeting to be discontinued, due to drunkenness and rowdy behaviour, and races ended in 1851.
• Victoria’s diaries are available at http:www.queenvictoriasjournals.org.

When the country went to war in August 1914 there was an immediate impact on Tunbridge Wells. Uniformed troops, marching in formation with rifles over their shoulders, became a familiar sight. Army lorries thundered through the town. Large numbers of soldiers from all over England assembled here before heading to the western front. Initially bell tents and a field kitchen were erected on the Common, but soon more substantial billets were provided in public buildings and in empty private houses. Food kitchens were opened and entertainments organised.

First Battalion Mid-Kent Volunteers marching up Mount Pleasant in 1914

At Christmas many of the men were given leave and headed home. However two and a half thousand of them enjoyed a lavish dinner in the town, organised and paid for by wealthy local couple, the Alves.

New Zealander Duncan Elliott Alves was an oil magnate, with interests in New Guinea and Venezuela. In around 1905 he moved to Tunbridge Wells, together with his parents, and in 1911 he married Hazel Wilson, a Canadian who was around twenty years his junior. Duncan involved himself in the life of the town, especially sport – he was president of the Tunbridge Wells Football Club and of the Grove Bowling Club. At his home, a house called ‘The Braes’ on Boyne Park, he had an extensive collection of pictures, an aviary with many rare and exotic birds and large garage which housed his collection of motor cars. Duncan would later be described as ‘tall, debonair and nattily dressed’ and as someone ‘who does everything on the grand scale wherever he goes’.

The dinner Duncan envisaged for the troops was certainly on a grand scale. The Courier commented ‘most minds would have shrank from the colossal task of carrying it out, but Mr Alves is not a man to be appalled by the magnitude of an undertaking’. At only two weeks’ notice detailed arrangements were delegated to the Tunbridge Wells Tradesmen’s Association, who recruited around 1,000 men and women to act as stewards, carvers, waiters and entertainers. (Such was the town’s enthusiasm for the event, they could have had double that number of volunteers). The catering was carried out by Messrs. Parker and Hammick of the Pantiles, whose manager Mr Coles had to call on all his experience of providing ‘colossal dinners’ for 3,000 or more. Under his direction cookers were installed at each of the venues and huge volumes of food prepared.

Corn Exchange. One of the Christmas Dinner venues

At 5.45pm on the day itself the troops marched through the streets to eight locations across the town, including the Corn Exchange, King Charles the Martyr church and Skinners School. Each had been decorated with a colourful profusion of greenery, flags, bunting and streamers. The men tucked into roast turkey, beef and pork, followed by plum pudding and mince pies. There was mineral water to drink, together with a pint of beer for each man that wanted it (apart from at teetotal venues such as the YMCA). Accompanied by Brigadier General McFie, Duncan and Hazel Alves drove round town, visiting the various venues. They were greeted with great enthusiasm by the troops, who drank to their health. In his reply Duncan Alves said that the cheers the men had given that night were no less than they themselves would receive when they went to the Front and had the Germans on the run.

After-dinner entertainment was provided by ‘the leading lights of the local musical world’, who performed songs likely to appeal to the audience. At the Skating Rink on Culverden Down, 600 or so soldiers showed their appreciation of a performance of ‘She’s a Lassie from Lancashire’, by roaring out the chorus. They also contributed performances of their own – even the Brigadier General sang a well-received song. Repeated choruses and encores filled the time there and elsewhere until proceedings closed at 9.30pm.

‘Well, short of getting home, we couldn’t have had a better time this Christmas” said a sergeant of the 4^th South Lancs regiment. The Courier reported that the event went down well and ‘the generous and rollicking spirit of Yuletide reigned supreme’.

Everything ran like clockwork and the occasion seems to have fully achieved the aim of Mr Alves and of the whole town – to treat the soldiers as honoured guests and show them a good time before they left to fight for their country.

Note

• For further information on Tunbridge Wells and World War One take a look at the Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society’s 2014 publication ‘Shock of War’.

•  Duncan Alves left Tunbridge Wells in the 1920s, moving to Tidebrook Place near Mayfield and then to south Wales, where he bought and renovated a castle and served six years as the Mayor of Caernarvon.

Duncan Elliott Alves as Mayor of Carnarvon

Beau Nash in 1745

A scene is repeated each year in Tunbridge Wells from 1735 onwards: a large carriage rolls into town, pulled by six grey horses and followed by footmen, servants on horseback and a band of musicians blowing French horns. When the carriage pulls to a stop, a man emerges from it who has a stout figure, a red face, a long nose and a double chin. His clothes are showy, although not in the latest fashion, and on his head he wears a three-cornered white hat. From the manner of his arrival an onlooker might suppose that a royal visitor has arrived in town, but local residents know that he is not a royal, or even an aristocrat. He is Beau Nash, the Master of Ceremonies and this is his usual manner of arriving in town for the summer season.

Tunbridge Wells in 1748. From an engraving by Samuel Richardson

More than 100 years after Long North discovered the spring, the location’s popularity had grown. The Walks (Upper and Lower) had been built alongside the wells, consisting of lodging houses, separate coffee rooms for ladies and gentlemen, a circulating library, shops and the Assembly Room. Further accommodation was available close by on Mount Sion and up above the common on Mount Ephraim. However, only a small number of people lived in the town permanently and their houses were scattered through woods and commons. The place still felt more rustic than urban – something which was attractive to visitors from London.

When 61-year-old Welshman Richard ‘Beau’ Nash declared himself Master of Ceremonies in 1735, residents of Tunbridge Wells (as the place was now known) were delighted, especially traders who were aware of the boost his presence had given to Bath over the past 30 years. While he was not handsome, or from a noble background (his father was a glass bottle maker), he was supremely confident and his wit and abundance of small talk made him popular, especially with ladies.

Beau Nash, who called on all new visitors to the spa, set a programme that was to be followed each day which included promenading, taking the waters, attending the chapel of King Charles the Martyr, tea drinking, gaming and (twice a week) public balls. He also prescribed a code of behaviour which visitors were expected to observe, including a ban on men carrying swords.

Sarah Porter by William Pether (in the National Portrait Gallery)

Dippers, musicians, bellringers, waiters, clergy, booksellers the sweeper and others all had to be paid and Nash set subscriptions to be levied from visitors. He employed Sarah Porter, who became known as the ‘Queen of the Touters’, for this task. She would stand at the door of the ballroom and greet each new arrival, enquiring after their mother, sister, brother or aunt, as though she was intimately acquainted with them. The visitor would then be expected to pay up. If they refused, Sarah would follow them round the room, with paper and pencil in hand, until they did so. However annoyed people became, however rude they were to her, she never lost her cool or became uncivil.

For most visitors the gaming part of Nash’s schedule, which included dicing, cards and lotteries, was of more interest than the healing properties of the spring water and huge sums of money were won and lost. However, in 1739, 1740 and 1745 successive acts of parliament reduced the number of legal forms of gambling, putting this form of entertainment in jeopardy.

To get round a ban on games involving numbers, local resident Humphrey Cook invented ‘Evens and Odds’, a game which involved a roulette wheel with letters. EO was played at the Assembly Rooms, but it was not long before a dispute arose between Cook and the manager there over how profits should be shared. Beau Nash intervened and negotiated a resolution, after which it was agreed that he would receive a portion of the profits. In return he undertook to encourage people to play, while making out that he was just a fellow gambler. Nash kept no records, but after a while he became convinced that he was being cheated out of his share; he reckoned he could have lost out by as much as 20,000 guineas here and in Bath. He took legal action, but it brought him no benefit and the only real consequence was that his deceit in misleading visitors was revealed and his reputation damaged irreversibly.

Nash remained Master of Ceremonies in Tunbridge Wells for a further period, but suffered from increasingly poor health. His final visit seems to have been in 1755, after which he remained in Bath, where he died in 1761

Note

• The wonderful writing group I belong to meets at Nash House on Mount Sion, which is currently home of author Sarah Salway, but said to have at one time been Beau Nash’s home, where he enjoyed illegal gambling sessions!

Dudley Lord North. (Source V&A)

He played music, he composed poems, he danced gracefully and excelled at jousting. Dudley, the third Baron North, was a man of many talents. He threw himself wholeheartedly into the  life at the court of King James I and was popular with most courtiers, although his hot temper alienated some of them.

Over time the excesses of Lord North’s lifestyle harmed both his finances and his health and in around 1606 he developed a lingering, consumptive disease, which sapped his energy and lowered his spirits. He was only twenty-five years old, but he felt like an old man at the end of life. A few years earlier, while travelling in Europe on military service, he had consumed copious amounts of hot treacle to protect himself from the plague and he later decided that this (rather than the manner in which he had been living) was the cause of his ill health.

‘Get away from court’, Lord North’s friends and physicians advised. ‘Country air will benefit your health’. So he travelled to Earage in Sussex (now called Eridge) to visit his friend the Earl of Bergavenny (now Abergavenny) and, hopefully, recuperate.

His host’s property, a gothic hunting lodge, was certainly in the country. A good distance from London, it was surrounded with dense, dark forest, broken only by occasional sandstone outcrops, clearings in which iron was smelted over charcoal fires, a few scattered houses and some poor quality roads. The closest town, nine miles or so away, was Tunbridge (present day Tonbridge), with its castle, market and school.

Plaque to Lord North beside the wells

Rural life soon proved too quiet and restrictive for Lord North and the fresh air seemed not to be making any difference to his health. So after just a short time he set off to ride back to London, feeling more despondent than ever. He had only gone a short distance when, as he was passing through a wooded valley, he caught sight of water bubbling up from a spring. The shiny scum on its surface, and the rust-red trail it left as it flowed into a nearby brook, reminded him of a spa he had visited while abroad. Perhaps this water would have the same healing properties?

The story goes that he borrowed a bowl from the occupant of a nearby cottage and drank some of the water. Its iron taste seemed to indicate mineral content and so he had several bottles filled and took them back to London. The physicians he consulted there analysed the water and concluded that it contained ‘vitriol’ – a substance thought to be able to cure ‘the colic, the melancholy, and the vapours’. In addition to this it was said of it: ‘it made the lean fat, the fat lean; it killed flat worms in the belly, loosened the clammy humours of the body, and dried the over-moist brain’. [Note: I have found a number of places where these words are quoted, but nowhere that cites the original source.]

The following year, once winter was over and the roads were in a better state, Lord North returned to Earage and stayed for three further months, drinking the waters regularly. When he appeared at court again, looking in the best of health, the contrast with his previous sickly condition made other courtiers curious as to what had brought about his recovery. Soon many of them were heading into the country in the summer months each year  to visit the spring. To accommodate them Lord Bergavenny had the site cleared, wells dug, paving laid and the area enclosed with wooden railings. A Mrs Humphreys was appointed as the first in a long line of ‘dippers’ to extract water from the spring and pour it out for visitors to drink. (She was said to be the person who had drawn water for Lord North on that first occasion).

Although he had benefited from the water, Lord North was evidently not completely healed. Suffering from both ill health and financial difficulties, he spent most of the rest of his life quietly at his home in Cambridgeshire, occupying himself with his family, music and writing.

The Spring in 1664 (Source: Colbran’s Directory)

The Chalybeate spring, meanwhile, continued to grow in popularity. In the early years visitors had to find accommodation in the nearby hamlets of Rusthall and Southborough, or further away in Tonbridge. However, when Charles I’s French wife, 19-year-old Queen Henrietta Maria, came in 1629 to convalesce after the premature birth and death of her first child, she opted for a different solution and set up camp on nearby Bishops Down for six weeks. As many as forty tents were required to accommodate the Queen and her entourage, who were entertained during their stay by masques and dancing. A further royal visit in 1663, by Henrietta Maria’s son Charles II and his wife Catherine, secured the spa’s popularity.

Over 400 years later…..

In the summer of 2014 the Chalybeate spring ran dry for the first time since Lord North discovered it. Despite various investigations it seemingly has not been possible to discover the reason.

Meanwhile at my home, on the other side of the Common, the rusty spring water that soaks the ground around my bins shows no sign of drying up. A pity that a covenant on the house (which was built in 1901) says I am not permitted to pump water out of the ground!

Note

• This version of the discovery of springs at Tunbridge Wells is the most generally accepted one. However, there is a lack of original sources to confirm it. The earliest account is in Benge Burr’s ‘History of Tunbridge Wells’, published over 100 years’ later in 1766. Even he acknowledges the lack of concrete evidence available to him.
• A ‘Chalybeate’ spring is one whose water contains iron salts. It is pronounced Ka-lee-bee-at.