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Town Profile


IT seems amazing that something as basic as water was to be the making of Royal Tunbridge Wells 400 years ago. To a great extent, the town owes its commercial success, its prominence as a tourist destination and, ultimately, its royal prefix to the health-giving properties of the local “Adam’s ale”.


TunbridgeWells – a town tapping into its heritage


By Peter Erlam 12 Mid Kent Living


It was Dudley, Lord North who, while out riding in 1606, discovered the Chalybeate Spring, which cured him of a complaint. Word quickly spread about the almost-medicinal quality of the Tunbridge water. Lord North's physician said it contained “vitriol” - chalybeate water is impregnated with salts of iron - and he claimed “it could cure the colic, the melancholy, and the vapours; 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”. Yes, it sounds like quackery but it


has kept the tourism tills jingling for more than four centuries. Indeed, the largest sector of the present-day local economy consists of hotels, restaurants and retail, which accounts for around 30%of all jobs. The first record of a royal “partaking


of the waters” was Queen Henrietta, who in 1629 stayed for six weeks to recover from the birth of her second son, the future Charles II. In adult life, he himself enjoyed the waters on many occasions.


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