The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Tunbridge Wells, Kent*

Tunbridge Wells, Kent Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• The homebase store opposite sainsbury's. Its just so green! (probabaly)
• RVP....'cos its full of my favourite shops!
• The place where the BBC are broadcasting from
• Calverly Crescent posh houses.
• The Old West, how sad!!!
• Hotel Du Vin.
• church - nice tower
• safeways...so many memories from the past
• High Rocks....PURE CHEESE!!!!!!!!!
• BP garage
• The Playroom - Bentham Farm - Modest Corner.
• My house - it really is great, has a garden and everything
• My old school Twggs!! Its full of supossedly temporary classrooms which have been there for about 20 years but the building is still nice
• Has to be the houses in Calverly park, huuuuge and very very posh.
• The underground bunker under the common leading to the hospital (serious). I am not going to print the entrance needless to day it is near the rocks on the common, possible at the back of a carpark on the right (if facing toward s the main road).
• The D'ambrosia Milk Bar is worth a visit; all Fifties plastic and crome.It's Rock and Roll, bring a Harley and a Quiff...
• Calverly Park Crescent.

Demolish It Now Building

• The town hall. Its manky and it looks like a remnant of communism. oh and all the papers in it will make it burn easily
• tech
• Millenium Clock is awful and should never have been built. Stupid artistic type designed it. Fool
• Town hall should go and build a great nite club for under 18s!!!
• The Old West Station. No offense but I've tasted their food and it seems they just buy it from sainsburys next door, defrost, and serve it. It's rough. DO NOT GO THERE. DEMOLISH IT NOW.
• TN4...or whatever it is called now. BRING BACK THE GEORGE!!!!!
• The home at whoever it is that doesn't like Showfields lives!
• Old abc cinema
• The Littern Tree + Bar Zia
• Skinners.......its a skool. well i dont hav a better reason.its a rele s**ty skool.trust me i go there!!!!!i meen they hav no money.wen they get it all they do is spend it on coffee machines and dart boards 4 the staff room!!!!!!u could sell the land 2 a farmer or sumin u would get more money that way
• The millenium clock (does that count?)
• That concrete office block at the end of the pantiles, also houses Somerfield:O(
• Waitrose - ugly expensive supermarket
• ALL OF SHOWFIELDS AND SHERWOOD, WITH RESIDENTS AN' ALL
• Disgusting church down the High Street. Knocked down a beautiful old church and built one of those modern, cheap, shop fronted (for gods sake!) monstrosities. More fire and brimstone and less bloody poncey guitar playing. The only way to save religion! Just goes to show that local and national (see Private Eye - knooks and cranies) outcry mean sod all to the local planners.
• Lloyds TSB from a personal Perspective, but also High Weald Building in Camden Road - it just DOESN'T fit in, all that galss and perspex next to Georgian Masonry!!!
• Police Station...
• Not a building, but the hideous eyesore that the council call 'The Millenium Clock' - a demented version of the Eiffel Tower if you ask me - BUT, does attract skaters, which is a good thing :)
• Town Hall, Police Station, Assembley Halls and the Old Cinema to make way for a 3000+ Capacity music venue to attract some of the big bands to town. The forum has played host to up-and-coming-acts like Oasis, Bluetones, Feeder, Menswear but it needs a BIG music venue. Replace the old cinema will a club, it already has 3 rooms and a great enterance with plently of room for a cloakroom, plus it in the centre of town, 2 minutes from the station.
• The ugly 'Millenium' clocktower
• The police station, need I say more, a monstrosity and its full of useless tea drinking pilocks.
• None, its Tunbridge Wells not too much modern archetecture.
• Kent+Sussex hospital(I work there!)
• so many, what were they on in the 50`,60`and 70`? every Wimpey house on the High Brooms Estate.

The Best Things

• The fact that you can walk along the highstreet at certain times of the day and see yourself on the local news.
• the feeling you get of freedom and escape when you leave. and the fit birds
• ice cream . alcohol. boys and calverly
• The Guinea Butt .... hummm.... a traditional pub with a twist.... I luv it !!
• Most of the women are good looking and pleasant. Hence why I am getting married to one.
• My friends, my house, the park, the bandstand and the cafe on sunday morning!
• We have a decent range of shops in town which can't be said for the likes of places like Tonbridge or Hastings.We're in a good location as the seaside and London are'nt that far away.
• Dunorlan Park is lovely and there aren't any chavs there (unlike Calverly). Most of the town is actually quite pretty. Easy to go somewhere better - i.e. London or Brighton.
• It's not Tonbridge
• Not a lot really, just the amount of pubs. And my mates, they're cool!!
• Roger's three way Cafe in Silverdale, best fry-up in town.
• STeam railway for tourists....nowhere to skate or hang out. Not much really
• Remembering bikes, mcdonalds and the village inn in the early '80s but not actually living there any more.
• chillin in calvarly in the summer
• Efe's Kebab shop - free lollies (according to the girls at work!!!!!!!) Cash and Romeo on the door at the (litten) tree - will have a laugh and yet be still menacing!
• Friday Nights in Forum Woods
• That thing that your Mum does with her thighs - ooooh weee!
• SKATERS
• Watching the World Cup then chilling out in the bars and pubs or out on the pantiles, fantastic.
• Go into town and you bump into abot a million people you know which can be quite nice sometimes!!
• It's not Tonbridge.
• The daffoils on the main road in from langton,East grinstead and groombridge sadly only in the spring thereafter a bare expanse please plant something for the summer!
• good coffee and 'Spoons on a Wednesday night.
• The lack of clubs just means that the pubs are better to make up for it.
• toad rock, Victorians would go there when Tunbridge Wells was fashionable. Great fun for kids, big rocks to climb, sand to get covered in, my favourite place to go as a child.
• The best things in life are free.....Harrisons, Bowles and Denny rock outcrops and of course the High Rocks .....rope up with yer mates (lasses too) and dangle all day...take a barbie, a few cans too, a smoke and its off to the back woods.... ..great scenery...great laughs...stay the whole week-end...ain't no one gonna bother you....except the midges...so throw another log on.
• The style and atmos, you only realise this when you leave.
• Lying on the rocks, with your mates, and a new pack of fags, in the constant sunshine, having drunk all the tea you can, and having bought all the records you can afford at the Longplayer.
• the charming Victorian`s and down to earth people.
• One of the best places to go in Tunbridge Wells is Laser Quest, a state of the art laser game (01892) 544533. It is open from 9am to 11pm and is well worth a bash if you feel in need of some serious fun.
• Trinity Arts Centre - a theatre converted from a church with an imaginative programme.
• Toad Rock - It's a rock. It looks like a toad. It has a pub next to it.
• High Rocks - They're rocks. They're high. They have a pub next to them.
• A Day at the Wells - a multimedia history experience on the Pantiles. Sounds tacky, but is actually rather good, and the artificial stables smell has to be inhaled to be believed.
• The Common - an expanse of heath and woodland in the centre of town, interspersed with rock outcrops. (see hook ups above).
• The Pantiles, a tourist trap during the day, but reclaimed by the townspeople after sundown. The perfect place to have an open air drink in the evening, when the pubs spill out onto the walks and the drinkers colonise every flat surface available.

The Worst Things

• Lived there for the first 25 years of my life - now live elsewhere and am very glad too. This place suffers from an incredible amount of small town syndrome. Loads of pikey car thieves with nothing better to do than nick my motor. For gods sake, don't move here. It's sooooooo middle class and suburban - at the risk of stepping over the line, when was the last time you saw a non-white person in this place??? I can't stand it. Live somewhere else where the BMW driving fraternity obsessed with money and houses won't look down on you!
• the worst things are ythe junkies, and the skaters showing off at the clock tower-it's funny when they fall off!
• All the chavs, wanna-bes and "cool" pot heads. GET YOURSELVES TO TONBRIDGE!!!
• no clubs. no clubs. expensive pubs. all people out either little school girls or piikeys. everyone has their heads so far stuck up their arses they are in danger of breaking their collar bones. going home at 11 if you dont like bar zia of davinchies. davinchies. del barnard. and much much more
• bad hair days ,o.p.m and all those other crap bands
• Lots of Traffic, especially going into Tunbridge Wells through Southborough! It is always blocked up. Even more so now that they have put in new one way roads and stupid Bus lanes that all the sods drive their cars through to jump the queue. Stuck up people! Keep away from these housing areas as they are little minature Beriuts: Showfields, Sherwood. Nasty Street: Whitegate Close - Southborough (Full of drug addicts which the Police seem to turn a blind eye to!, and horrible little kids that stratch your car up with their football's and their bikes - the parents have no control over them or just don't care as they are taking drugs or selling them!) I am moving out of the area to the countryside as its so bad! Awful pubs which sell over priced beer and put the heating on full even during the summer to make you drink more, the queue's to the bar are crazy too. Buy two or three pints at a time so you don't waste your evening queuing up for more! Evil Traffic Wardens. The Council takes ages to respond to your requests i.e. it took over 8 months and 20 emails to get a Streetlamp bulb replaced! Council Tax and House prices are crazy too. £150,000 buys you a basic house (Terraced), £80,000 for a 1 bed flat!!! Maddness.
• The crooked clock. Don't you think it looks a bit crooked?
• People from outside the town thinking we're snobs or don't like outsiders.
• Most of the people (except my mates obviously) The prices The lack of good pubs and clubs How packed it gets weekend nights and even in the week. Chavs randomly fighting people in Calverly and in town. St. John's pool - it's crap and it's always closed and all they ever do is build a new foyer. The homeless people drinking special brew and drinking in the Sussez Arms and begging outside an off-license (that's just taking the piss) which is ADVERTISING FOR NEW EMPLOYESS IN ITS WINDOW - which is taking the piss even more. A trained monkey could get a job in Tunbridge Wells - there's loads of jobs that need filling.
• Chavs, it's been said before!! Watch out for baseball cap, puffa jacket wearing people with lots of gold, girlfriends with large earrings, these are classic signs to look for.
• It's very incestuous. People in Tunbridge Wells only like other people from Tunbridge Wells. Everyone else is an outsider and not welcome in their precious town. Everyone in Tunbridge Wells adheres 100% to a stereotype, be it goth, skater, chav, casual... whatever. There is no individuality, everyone is in a group. It's like they've taken 4 or 5 people and just cloned them thousands of times.
• The amount of people who look down on everyone, with there big cars and plummy accent! Delusional knobs!
• Out of town filth pikeys, they ruin our town fighting and stealing,Stay in Paddock Wood with yer revolting gold, tatoos and stolen Granadas.
• Chavs....too many round here with their fake gold and idiotic clothing
• Remembering bikes, mcdonalds and the village inn in the early '80s but not actually living there any more.
• The chavs and the pikeys. I'm being objective here, not insulting. You look awful. Sort out the cheap gold, the puffas, the makeup and you may be accepted by society. Really, your doing yourselves no favours. Stay in Maidstone.
• The shocking lack of puff
• the chavs.....
• CHAVS ITS FULL OF THEM
• All the Chavs - we hate chavs take your fake gold somewhere else. You will never contribute anything to society!
• Chavs (does that count as malicious??!)
• The amount of people coming in from Maidstone, Sevenoaks, Crowborough, Paddock Wood, Tonbridge etc, it gets too busy. Also the people who only fo out to get into fights but after a while you'll know where this happends and avoid it, you may learn the hard way though!
• It's not Nottingham
• Pikeys, violence, men pinching your arse and being verbally abused by drunken strangers on a Friday night.
• Too many mcdonalds! - three so far, but NO burger KING!!!!! (please remedy this!)
• Full of old people, *really* busy at chistmastime :(
• The amount of Violence seems to have increased Dramatically amogst the under 18's.
• Hiding from gangs of pykies at chucking out time on a Friday night. Seeing the tories get elected again.
• traffic grid lock. exiting the Victoria Palace car park on a Saturday afternoon. I live in California now, they think it`s bad here! they have seen nothing!!!! There`s no Starbucks in town. If you have never had Starbucks coffee you don`t know what your missing anyway.
• Being too close to London and Brighton, there is a frightening lack of night-clubs which are actually worth going to in the town. Invest in a trip to somewhere else for a night of hedonistic debauchery!
• The gridlock outside the Royal Victoria Place every Saturday. Do not attempt to drive in Tunbridge Wells. Walking is much quicker.
• The council is planning on installing closed circuit TV surveillance in the Pantiles area. Write to The Town Hall, Mount Pleasant Road, Tunbridge Wells, Kent to add your voice to the protest against it.
• The MGM cinema. Two screens and a cupboard. It tries to compensate for its small size by showing different films at different times in the day, and with Wednesday Night Art Film Specials. What we really need is a multiplex - a lot of people end up going to Lakeside in Essex instead.
• Did you ever try drinking ink when you were a kid, just to see what it tasted like? Well, the chalybeate springs in the Pantiles taste exactly the same.

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Last updated: 2007-05-22