Calverley Park and Calverley Grounds

Summary

Calverley Park and Calverley Grounds, an early/mid-19th century landscape of villas in parkland, designed by the architect and builder Decimus Burton; the development survives as an early and influential example of the 'park suburb'. The western part, Calverley Grounds, was developed as a public park in the 1920s.

Reasons for Designation

Calverley Park and Calverley Grounds, an early/mid-C19 landscape of villas in parkland, designed by the architect and builder Decimus Burton, the western part developed as a public park in the 1920s, is registered at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Designer:

* the designer, Decimus Burton, was a leading architect of the first half of the C19, celebrated for a wide variety of building and landscape projects, and a pioneer of this type of suburban development.

Design interest:

* as an early and influential example of the ‘park suburb’, characterised by the picturesque disposition of private houses within a landscaped setting;
* the integrated villas and parkland, originally conceived as forming a whole with the meadows providing a vista to the west, were the central and celebrated feature of the wider Calverley Estate scheme;
* despite C20 alterations, most notably the transformation of Calverley Grounds into a public park, the eastern parkland with its villa layout retains the essence of its C19 character; at the same time the line of the ha-ha is still legible, illustrating the original intention of the designer to unite the parkland and meadow elements, and the overall form of the park site survives.

Group value:

* Calverley Park and Calverley Grounds retain strong group value with the twenty-four villas and associated lodges (all listed at Grade II*) which form part of the park design, and with the Grade II-listed C18 Calverley Hotel, remodelled in the 1830s, as well as with other surviving elements of the Calverley Estate, including Grade II-listed Calverley Park Crescent and Burton’s Grade I-listed Holy Trinity Church.

History

The site comprising Calverley Park and Calverley Grounds formed part of the Calverley Estate put together by John Ward from parcels of land he acquired in 1825-1826; the name was taken from an area of land owned by Ward further to the east. The residential and commercial development of the estate, to designs by Decimus Burton, was intended to provide a 'self-contained village landscape - virtually a new town', composed as 'an economic, architectural and scenic unity' (Country Life, 1969); the estate included shops, workshops, a market house, a hotel, a church (Holy Trinity, 1827-1829, listed Grade II*, National Heritage List for England (NHLE) entry 1223642), a school, and cottages for those those providing services, as well as houses. The builders were Messrs Bramah of Pimlico. Work began in 1828 and was largely completed by 1839 (plan dated 1839 in Colbran, 1840). The centrepiece was Calverley Park, with its detached villas in an ‘Arcadian’ parkland setting. Although many of the estate’s buildings have now been lost, those closely relating to the park – the villas, the lodges, the crescent to the north-east, and the earlier hotel building – all survive.

The registered landscape is divided in two main parts: Calverley Park to the east and Calverley Grounds to the west, though the 1820s design encompassed the two parts in the creation of a unified landscape; on C19 maps the whole area is marked as ‘Calverley Park’. A ha-ha between the sections allowed views from the designed parkland across the meadows of Calverley Grounds (or ‘Calverley Plain’) and towards the distant landscape; John Britton described the villas as 'having a most extensive tract of wild and cultivated country within their command' (Britton, 1832). While providing a wider setting for the Calverley Park villas, Calverley Grounds also served as the pleasure grounds to the Calverley Hotel set on the plateau to the north-east, which in turn benefitted from ‘appropriated’ views of the park: ‘From its contiguity to the park, it appears to form a portion of it’ (Colbran, 37). During the C19, Calverley Grounds were open in character with scattered trees and clumps; the area contained a spring and a stream-fed ornamental lake (plan in Britton, 1832; Colbran, 1839; illustration by C Dodd of 1840) which lay to the south-west of the area presently occupied by the bandstand. The lake was drained in 1850 following the arrival of the South-Eastern Railway in 1845 (CL, 1969).

In 1920 Calverley Grounds were acquired by Tunbridge Wells Borough Council for a public park, and that area was re-designed. A thick hedgerow was planted along the top of the ha-ha, largely concealing the views between the two areas. The Ward Estate remained freeholder of Calverley Park, the leaseholds of the villas being progressively sold off from 1947; the parkland became the property of the trustees of the Calverley Park Association, formed of the villa owners. In 2025 the north-eastern area of the park is noted as a significant grassland and wild-flower habitat.

Calverley Park holds a significant place within the historic development of the ‘park suburb' – typically characterised by a picturesque layout with individual or paired houses in private grounds and served by private roads – which became increasingly popular during the course of the C19. The earliest such schemes included plans by John White (1809) and John Nash (1813) for Regent’s Park, as well as Nash’s realised scheme for Regent’s Park, completed in 1827. The villas within the park reduced from 40 to eight, together with the Park Villages to east and west. James Burton, Decimus Burton's father and a prominent London developer, was financially involved in Regent’s Park, where Decimus designed a number of villas and terraces, whilst John Ward was a major investor. The adjacent Eyre Estate in St John’s Wood, planned in 1794 and developed from 1804, was an early example on a more modest scale. The Burtons established the new seaside town of St Leonards-on-Sea in 1828, including an area of villas within a landscape, and Decimus Burton was involved in a number of comparable projects. Planned residential park schemes in Tunbridge Wells inspired by the Calverley Estate included Nevill Park (1830s-1850s), Camden Park (from 1846), and Hungershall Park (1850s-1860s).

Decimus Burton (1800-1881) trained at the Royal Academy under Sir John Soane and began his career in his father's office, before establishing his own practice in 1823. Early commissions included the Colosseum in Regent’s Park (1823-1827, demolished), the Hyde Park Screen (1823-1825), and the Athenaeum Club (1827-1830). Known as a leading architect of the Greek Revival, he was not a purist and worked in a range of styles, as demonstrated at Calverley Park. In his residential work, as well as planned urban and suburban schemes, Burton produced individual villas and small country houses, including Holwood, near Keston in Kent, re-built in Grecian style for John Ward in 1823. As architect to the Zoological Society of London from 1826 to 1841, Burton was responsible for the design and layout of London Zoo. Burton became architect to the Royal Botanical Society in 1841; the Palm House at Kew (1844-1888) was one of a number of notable glass and iron conservatories he designed. Burton was a founder member and later vice president of the Institute of British Architects (now the Royal Institute of British Architects). He retired in 1869.

Details

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING: Calverley Park and Calverley Grounds lie in the centre of Tunbridge Wells, to the east of Mount Pleasant Road and about 130m north-east of the railway station. The registered site of about 11 hectares comprises 4.5 hectares of public park, 3 hectares of communal parkland, and 3.5 hectares of villa and other private gardens. It lies on the plateau and steep, south-facing slopes of Mount Pleasant extending across the floor of the narrow west-facing valley separating Mount Pleasant from the further crest of Mount Sion to the south. From the higher ground there are views westwards and southwards, through tree cover, over the town and to the more distant countryside. The site is enclosed on its northern and eastern sides by an almost continuous stone wall, built as part of the original layout (sections are missing towards the west end of the northern boundary and Calverley Park Crescent has no wall); this forms the boundary with the adjacent Crescent Road, Calverley Road, and Prospect Road. To the south the site is bounded by rear fences and hedges belonging to mid-C19 to late-C20 commercial and housing development, and to the west borders late-C20 commercial buildings and associated car parks, built on land originally forming part of Calverley Grounds.

ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES: the principal entrance to Calverley Park is from Crescent Road to the north-west of the site, through the tall carriage arch of the west-facing Victoria Lodge (Grade II*, NHLE entry 1203351) with a single-storey Doric lodge room on each side. Some 60m east of the lodge, the main drive is met by a secondary drive skirting the south-east boundary of the gardens to Calverley Park Crescent from an entrance to the park on Calverley Road at Keston Lodge – octagonal like the Tower of the Winds at Athens, but with Italianate detailing (also Grade II*, NHLE entry 1083781); the gates here are replacements. The main drive from Victoria Lodge passes through a second set of timber vehicular and wicket gates, erected in the 1950s to a design by local architect Cecil Burns (1882-1969), then sweeps eastwards and southwards past the villa frontages to a set of matching gates between quadrant walls of rusticated ashlar at the single-storey Farnborough Lodge, a rustic-picturesque cottage (Grade II*, NHLE entry 1281705). (Keston and Farnborough lodges are named after the lodges on John Ward’s Holwood Estate.)

The main entrance to Calverley Grounds lies at the south-west corner of the site, 60m east of Mount Pleasant Avenue. The entrance is marked by an early-1920s half-timbered cottage-style lodge, and by iron gates between brick piers.

PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS: Calverley Park consists of twenty-four villas designed by Decimus Burton and built 1828-1836 (all listed at Grade II*, under 22 separate entries). Unified by size, form and materials, these include examples with Italianate, Grecian, rustic and Gothic detailing; several are fairly archetypal Regency villas, with classical proportions, curved canopies and architectural ironwork. Philip Whitbourn writes that ‘the experience of walking along the curved carriage drive can be likened to turning the pages of a late Georgian architectural pattern book’ (Whitbourn, 25). There are two pairs of semi-detached villas (numbers 5-6 and 9-10). The villas are arranged in a quadrant, on level ground, around the north and east perimeter of the site. Numbers 1 and 5 to 24 overlook the park, with full-height windows and verandahs or loggias to the park-facing elevations, whilst numbers 2, 3 and 4 stand close to the northern boundary and are approached from Calverley Road. All the villas, except numbers 3 and 4 which are faced with stone cut to resemble brickwork, are built of large ashlar blocks from a quarry in Calverley Woods a short distance to the north; all have slate roofs except numbers 3 and 4 which are tiled. Considerable alteration to a number of villas occurred during the later C19.

Some 100m west of the villas, on the north boundary and overlooking Calverley Grounds, is the former Calverley Hotel (listed with its forecourt wall and gate piers at Grade II, NHLE entry 1338818), a three-storey stone building erected by the Earl of Egremont around 1760 as Great Mount Pleasant House; the Great Mount Pleasant Estate formed the core of the Calverley development. The building was shown on Britton's plan of around 1832 as Calverley House, and was remodelled by Burton as a hotel by 1839 (Colbran); in 2025 it is the Hotel du Vin.

GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS

CALVERLEY PARK: the overall design of the park was intended to give the occupants of the villas the impression of being placed within private parkland (though the villas are not entirely invisible to one another), each villa also being set within its own private garden. The villas are set towards the outer extent of the site, with the gardens extending about 20-30m in front of each residence; the gardens are largely laid to lawn and shrubbery. An early illustration indicates that the gardens were originally separated from the park drive by railings or timber paling fronting low hedges (in Whitbourn, 8); they are now largely enclosed by taller, dense hedging. A low stone wall on a rusticated plinth is visible in places.

The communal parkland extends westwards in a crescent shape, on level ground at the narrow, north end but broadening and sloping gently at the southern end in a similar form to that shown on Britton's plan of about 1832. The parkland is laid to grass with informal clumps and individual trees of a variety of ages and species, a few of the mature oaks and cedars surviving from the pattern established by the 1860s (OS) which itself is sparser than that suggested by 1830s plans (Britton, Colbran). There are more densely planted areas to north and south. The system of winding paths shown laid out in the early C19 has now (2025) gone, although a reduced structure of pathways appears to have survived at least until 1937 (OS). An informal path traverses the park from its northernmost to its southernmost corner, with a subsidiary path running to meet it from the bend in the drive to the east. The western boundary of the parkland is formed by a low stone-walled ha-ha, the views to Calverley Grounds and the distant landscape now (1997) largely concealed by a continuous hedgerow along the top of the wall, as well as by trees, though at some points views remain of Calverley Grounds, the former Calverley Hotel, Holy Trinity church, and Tunbridge Wells Common.

To the north-east of Victoria Lodge, and enclosed from the parkland and the villas by a tall, dense hedge, is the communal garden, or pleasure ground, of Calverley Park Crescent (listed at Grade II, NHLE entry 1346502). Originally Calverley Parade, completed by 1835, these seventeen houses were designed with ground-floor shops; they stand outside the registered area. Their balconies open south-eastwards to a drive and a long, crescent-shaped lawn backed by a broad mixed border against the hedge. The gardens were laid out in the early 1830s with a promenade extending the length of the lawn and a central tiered fountain (Colbran, 1839; mid-C19 illustration, in Whitbourn 1980), the layout being replaced by the late 1860s (OS) with one similar to the present arrangement.

CALVERLEY GROUNDS: the public park on the western side of the site retains the overall form established with its creation in the 1920s, though there have been changes of use in some areas, and some losses. A broad path from the main entrance leads eastwards along the floor of the valley to a semi-octagonal platform, recalling the form of the original 1924 bandstand and pavilion which stood in this position before being destroyed by bombing in 1940. A replacement bandstand was removed in 2010. The half-timbered tearoom to the north is a replacement or remodelling of the original thatched tearoom. Rising behind to the north is a steep bank of heathers and conifers, with a flight of stone steps leading upwards to the east of the tearoom. The upper level of the valley floor is terraced to form sports courts and croquet lawns, with a pavilion. To the south-east, the former bowling green area is now a playground. To the north-west of this is a rectangular sunken garden enclosed by a low stone wall. The gently sloping valley sides are grassed and planted with clumps, groups, and individual native and exotic trees and islands of shrubbery with conifers.

The formal gardens to the hotel comprise a two-tier, south-facing linear terrace, enclosed along the lower, park, side by a high clipped hedge. The upper terrace is laid to lawn and flower beds either side of a central paved walk and the lower one to grass with trees. The terraces are shown established in this form on Colbran’s map of 1839 – which shows the lower area as the ‘terrace walk’ – and on the 1st edition OS map. The western part of the gardens was built over in the late C20 and is outside the registered area.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

1181

Legacy System:

Parks and Gardens

Sources

Books and journals
Colvin, H, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (1995), 194-5
Newman, J, The Buildings of England, Kent: West and the Weald (2012), 622-626
Britton, J, Descriptive Sketches of Tunbridge Wells and the Calverley Estate (1832),
Colbran, J, Guide for Tunbridge Wells (1840),
Whitbourn, P, Decimus Burton Esquire, Architect and Gentleman (1800-1881) (2003),
Smith, J, Whitfield, M, England's Suburbs 1820-2020 (2025), 10-15, 138-9
Watkin, D, The English Vision: the Picturesque in Architecture, Landscape and Garden Design (1982), 189-190

Websites
Royal Collection Trust: JT Wedgwood after CT Dodd, 'Churchill's Calverley Hotel with the Park and Pleasure Grounds, Tunbridge Wells', accessed 3 July 2025 from https://www.rct.uk/collection/701668/churchills-calverley-hotel-with-the-park-and-pleasure-grounds-tunbridge-wells
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Decimus Burton, accessed 3 July 2025 from https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4125

Other
Britton, J, Plan of the Calverley Estate, circa 1832 (in Britton, 1832)
Colbran, J, Estate map, 1839 (in Colbran, 1840)
Jones, C, 'Picturesque Urban Planning - Tunbridge Wells and the Suburban Ideal. The development of the Calverley Estate 1825-1855'. Unpublished PhD thesis (2017), University of Oxford
Hussey, C, 'Calverley Park, Tunbridge Wells', in Country Life, 145 (1 May 1969), pp1080-3; (8 May 1969), pp1166-9)
Views of Calverley Grounds, Rose Garden, Tea House and Bandstand, photographs, circa late 1920s (Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery)

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