The Church Of King Charles The Martyr

THE CHURCH OF KING CHARLES THE MARTYR

Church. Situated on a corner site at one end of the Pantiles, close to the well at Tunbridge Wells with which the church has been intimately connected. The church was originally built as a chapel to serve people gathering at Tunbridge Wells to drink the water, and was one of the first permanent buildings constructed on the site. Thomas Neale, who began the commercial development of the town, was also involved in its construction. As the town grew around it the church was extended to cope with growing numbers of town dwellers and spa visitors. It became a parish church in 1889.

The building was constructed in phases. The original design dates from 1676–1684, built by Mr Green. This was lengthened to the north in 1679–80. Both phases have ornamental plaster ceilings. The existing north end was then the ritual east end. In 1688–1696 the church was doubled in size with a matching parallel block to the west, producing a plan that was almost square. Mr Waghorne was the builder for this work. A vestry, part of a schoolroom and vestry block were added in 1846. In 1882 Ewan Christian added a short chancel on the east side and the church was re-oriented. Christian also reinforced the church with steel.

The church is built of red brick with some blue headers and has tiled roofs. The present plan is square-shaped with north and south galleries, a southeast vestry, and a northeast organ chamber.

The ritual west end has buttresses with set-offs and is roofed north–south with sprocketed eaves above a deep cornice. A pair of matching brick porches with corner pilasters, stone cornices and rubbed brick flat arches to the outer doorways face this end. Seven tall windows with Y-glazing bars light the west end. The south side has two gables and three similar windows. Off the south end of the rear gabled roof is a clock turret with cupola. This has a square-on-plan weatherboarded base; the cupola features a domed lead roof with finial and weathervane. The clock dates from 1760 and the mechanism remains in situ, although the clock was worked by a 1998 mechanism as of the survey date; a minute hand was added in 1799. The south doorway into the vestry has a flat porch hood on curly timber brackets. The chancel is gabled to the east with a large round-headed window, flanked by the vestry and organ chamber blocks, which are roofed at right angles to the chancel. The organ chamber block has a canted northeast corner and a doorway into the vestry with a flat porch hood on curly timber brackets.

The interior is remarkable for its spectacular plasterwork of the highest quality, executed by craftsmen who had worked for Sir Christopher Wren. The east half of the nave is by John Wetherell and displays a design of shallow domes and roundels, enriched with husk ornament, festoons of fruit, cherubs' heads and palms. Wetherell was paid in 1681. The north bay of the design is a deeper octagon, formerly above the first-phase sanctuary. Wetherell designed this but it was executed by Henry Doogood. Doogood also executed the plasterwork now in the west half of the nave when the church was enlarged, employing a matching design in 1690–96 but interpreting it with more bravura, according to Pevsner.

The interior features grey and white paving. North and south galleries rest on turned timber posts; their fronts have fielded panels and date from the second phase but were amended around 1900 with tiered seating. Seventeenth-century chapel benches, a real rarity, survive both in the galleries and parts of the nave. The seats and arm rests are supported on turned standards. Some have late Victorian glove rests and Jonas Hanway umbrella stands attached. Benches in the two centre blocks of the nave were installed in 1912, their design making some reference to their seventeenth-century predecessors. Chancel woodwork incorporates pedimented panels with the Lord's Prayer and Creed in richly carved limewood frames by William Cheere, originating from the demolished church of All Hallows, Bread Street, in the City of London. An 1906 white marble font has an octagonal bowl decorated with festoons of fruit and winged cherubs' heads, on marble columns with carved capitals. The east window dates from 1901 and was made by Heaton, Butler and Bayne. Plain glazing was introduced in 1969, sympathetic to the building in the nave. The interior also has a segmental-headed 1882 chancel arch supported on classical columns flanked by narrow bays with matching pilasters and an entablature. The columns match those of the 1688–96 phase that mark the former west wall of the original church.

The development of the fabric of the church has been thoroughly researched and is well-documented, as is the major role it and its patrons played in the development of Tunbridge Wells as a fashionable spa. Contemporary lists of contributors and disbursements are framed in the church.