The North Downs Way Pilgrimage: Day Twenty Eight Royal Tunbridge Wells & The Langshott Manor

Day Twenty Eight Friday June 26

One more shopping day for a true dose of British culture, and checking out Royal Tunbridge Wells. Primarily a Georgian and Victorian town, it got its name from the Chalybeate Spring discovered in 1606. Word of the purported iron rich health-giving properties of the spring water soon spread, and visitors from London and elsewhere flocked to 'the Wells' to try the waters. Coffee houses, lodgings, shops, taverns and gaming houses soon sprang up in one continuous line near the Spring joined by a covered colonnaded walkway which later became known as the PANTILES. The paving installed here comprised one-inch thick square tiles made from heavy clay, so named because they were shaped in a wooden pan before firing.

PAN + TILE , right?

The original pantile flooring was removed in 1793 and substituted with stone flagging.

Today it's still a pretty colonnade with interesting boutiques,antique shops, open-air cafés, bars and restaurants.
Most of the town was built up during the 1800's, making for a mostly 20th C look over the earlier architecture I like so much. Queen Victoria liked coming here.

Too modern for me!

We Shall Partake of the Waters, Shop and We Shall Have Fun

We didn't see the spring or "take the waters", but we did discover the Cake Shed with the best Lemon Drizzle cake yet - come on, don't look at me like that, you HAVE to buy something to use the bathroom.

And there were other useful ways to get rid of our British Pounds before heading home to the US, like the Royal Victoria Shopping Mall ( said MAHL ).

And speaking of home, I love the last hotel!

Langshott Manor

Fairy Tale, Right?

The oldest part of the house was built in 1580. Now we're back in my fantasy world! It's been added to over the years up through the late 1800's ( Victoria again) , but done so you can barely tell. The grounds are superb with garden rooms, places to sit and always a view within the hedged property. There is a duck pond, (more of a duck swamp) they believe could be left over from a moat. If so, the house would have looked like Ightham.

The house passed among various owners until 1975 when the park, meadows and pastures were sold to a developer. The poor manor house has been gobbled up by suburban sprawl, especially since Horley is so close to Gatwick airport. Horley is nothing to write home about. At that time the house was forgotten and left to ruin. A new buyer came in 1986, did some renovating, then the current owners in 1997 brought it back to life as this great hotel.

With a SHOWER!