SOCIETY AT ROYAL TUNBRIDGE WELLS - Online Book

People, Society & Culture of Tunbridge Wells in the 18th Century & later.

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Development of Tunbridge Wells
directly by the many gifts she made. On one occasion she presented a basin to the spring, afterwards called " The Queen's Well," which is situated on the left-hand side of the Pump Room, and distinguished from the other by its iron bars. In 1698 she brought with her her son, the Duke of Gloucester. He, playing with other children on the Upper Walk, made slippery by rain, fell : to prevent any such accident in future, the princess gave £100 for the paving of the Walk. This money she entrusted to a resident, who did not bestir himself to get the work done, and when the next year Her Royal Highness came and found that the Walk had not been improved, she went away, vowing she would never again visit " The Wells." The matter was now attended to, and the Walk paved with a baked tile, called pantile : wherefore the Upper Walk was afterwards known as " The Pantiles," until, in an early year of the nineteenth century, it was repaved with stone (the ex­pense of which was defrayed by subscrip­tions from the inhabitants of the town), and after called, more magnificently and less picturesquely, The Parade. On the accession
of Queen Anne a triple row of birch-trees was
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