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The makers of our local Tunbridge Ware found the raw materials for their trade in the very woods that surround the town – perhaps on The Commons themselves.

They needed small pieces of stained wood to give them the palette of colours that went into the various boxes, writing slopes, paper weights etc, which were collectively are known as “toys”, to be sold as souvenirs to visitors to the Town. The colours come from either the natural colour of the  wood, or from the staining effect on wood of our local chalybeate water. Thus we have, besides the normal blacks and browns, reds, greens and yellows – enough to make up a full range of colours.

Trees were not grown specially for the purpose, but instead windfalls, twigs, and scraps of wood with the right colouring and shape would be looked for, picked up and brought in to the workshops of the Town. Found just a few days ago on Hargate Forest, the piece below illustrates perfectly the kind of wood that was used.

You can read more about this fascinating subject in “The Story of Tunbridge Ware”, produced by the Friends of the Museum and on sale in the Museum at just £4.95.

Do you have any Tunbridge Ware at home? Send us your pictures and we’ll post them here.

Always a leader of men, he spotted the run-down state of the Common, following the great storm of 1987, saw that the Commons Conservators were doing little about it, and decided that a Friends Group might spur them into action.

Those present will remember the rowdy meeting in the Council chamber which followed, and thus the Friends were born!

Patrick was also  the powerhouse behind the first” Frolics on the Common”, held in the early 1990s, and the fact that there has been only one more “Frolics” since then, shows how much we relied on his drive and energy.

A tall commanding figure, the holder of a CB and a CMG, tributes to his status as a senior civil servant, his main interests outside of his work were bridge and golf.

That the joint commons of Tunbridge Wells and Rusthall are now is such a fine shape is due very largely to him. We were lucky to have him amongst us when he was most needed.

David Wakefield

We are very sad to announce the death of Patrick Shovelton, founder of the Friends, on Friday 20th January at the age of 92. Patrick spearheaded the setting up of The Friends in the early 1990s and without his continued support over the years, it would not be the fine organisation that it is today.

Patrick will be sadly missed by all who knew him, but in his absence we are very proud to carry on the work that he started all those years ago in protecting Tunbridge Wells and Rusthall Commons for everyone who lives here.

Patrick’s funeral will be held on Tuesday, 31st January at St. Mary’s Church Lamberhurst, with donations to The British Lung Foundation.

To read David Wakefield’s words on Patrick’s life and his wonderful contribution to The Commons, click here.

And to read what the Courier had to say about Patrick, click here.

Would you like to share your memories of Patrick? We’d love to hear them. Please email us at friends@friendsofthecommons.co.uk

Photo courtesy of Jenny Blackburn. Thank you Jenny.

By Ian Beavis.

Late summer is the peak period for seeing – and in some cases hearing – grasshoppers and crickets. We regularly find them on our Museum mini-beast safaris in August, and the question always asked is how to tell the difference between the two. The answer is easy: grasshoppers have short antennae, much shorter than the body, while crickets have very long, thread-like antennae.

There are three species of grasshoppers and five crickets found on the Commons. All of them live in grass or other low vegetation, with the exception of the pale green Oak Bush-cricket. This lives high up in trees and is rarely seen unless it gets blown down or is attracted to lights at night. Grasshoppers and some crickets can be recognised by their characteristic songs, made by rubbing their hind legs against their wings, and used by the two sexes to communicate with each other while remaining camouflaged among foliage. The easiest song to pick out is the monotonous chirp of the Field Grasshopper, while its relatives the Meadow Grasshopper and Common Green Grasshopper have a more complex song that starts softly, builds in volume and suddenly cuts off.

Each of these three grasshopper species is found in a bewildering variety of colours. They can be various shades of brown, green or even purple, or any combination of these. All are useful for camouflage, and clearly none has an overriding competitive advantage, so all coexist in the gene pool. To identify grasshoppers, it is necessary to ignore the colour and focus on structural features. Field Grasshoppers have abundant white hairs on the underside, clearly visible in profile, and long wings. Common Green Grasshoppers also have long wings but lack the hairs. Meadow Grasshoppers have wings that are clearly shorter than the body, less than half its length in the case of the female.

Crickets are much less variable. The Oak Bush-cricket is one of two fully winged species, the other being the wonderfully named Long-winged Conehead, easily recognised by its pointed head. This used to be a rare species of wetlands, but in recent years it has spread much more widely.

Roesel’s Bush-cricket is also much commoner than it was, and is characterised by a bright yellow or green U shape on the side of its body, contrasting with a darker background. The remaining species have always been widespread. These are the large dull brown Dark Bush-cricket and the smaller Speckled Bush-cricket, which is green but peppered with innumerable tiny black specks.

By Philip Whitbourn.

Much consternation was caused recently, by an application to demolish Vale Royal Methodist Church in London Road, and to build a five-storied angular modern block in its place, incorporating fourteen flats above a new place of worship.

The church was built in 1878 by the well-known local firm of Willicombe and Oakley, to the design of the London architect Charles Bell. The building is in an early Gothic style and is faced with Kentish rag-stone, with Bath stone dressings and shafts of granite.

When the scheme was turned down, a person from the church was reported to have commented that it was not as though they were wanting to knock down Westminster Abbey. That, however, is not at all the point. If Westminster Abbey was to be taken as the benchmark for meriting conservation, then few historic buildings would survive in Kent. Canterbury Cathedral perhaps, but not much else.

The Kentish town of Dover boasts a noble castle, and Maidstone an Archbishops Palace. Nevertheless, in terms of historic townscape, they are both now examples of places where the whole adds up to less than the sum of the parts. In Royal Tunbridge Wells the reverse is true. Here we are fortunate in having a number of Georgian, and more especially Victorian, buildings which, although sometimes relatively modest in themselves, add up to a historic town of great character, where the whole exceeds the sum of the parts. Nowhere is this more true than in the sequence of older buildings facing our commons.

Vale Royal Methodist Church is included in the Local List of Heritage Assets within the Royal Tunbridge Wells and Rusthall Conservation Areas. In our town of Tunbridge Wells, two former Congregational Churches provide commendable examples of adaptation for new uses. One in Mount Pleasant for commercial use, and the other in Albion Road for residential use.
It would be good if that kind of approach could be explored at Vale Royal, where the old schoolroom beneath, might offer scope for the provision of a smaller continuing place of worship, if desired.

By Bettina Cassidy.

I’ve been threatening the Editor with crows for quite some time, but so far I’ve been dissuaded on the grounds that they’re black, and not very interesting to colour in. In the quest to escape crows for yet another issue, I was taken for a walk on the Common to investigate possible alternatives. “Have you done woodpeckers yet?” he asked hopefully. “I’ve done Great Spotted; you don’t get the green ones here,” I confidently replied. No sooner had the words left my lips, than that unmistakeable mocking laugh rang out from the trees – right on cue!

Green woodpeckers are one of those species which are more likely to be heard and not seen. A pity, because there are few birds which could claim to match them in the beauty stakes – if you spy an exotic-looking bird and think someone’s pet parrot’s escaped, chances are it’s a green woodpecker. Whoever coined the phrase “red and green should never be seen,” obviously wasn’t much of an ornithologist.

Unlike all the other woodpecker species, the Green Woodpecker won’t be heard drumming on a tree trunk, because he has a comparatively weak beak. He prefers to stay on the ground, stabbing his beak into an anthill, and if you want to find him on the Common, you’ll be most likely to spot him lurking around the anthills near Wellington Rocks. But not for long – you’re only likely to catch a brief glimpse of his bright yellow rump, swooping for cover into a tree in his characteristic undulating fashion.

Our fascination with the woodpecker goes back a long way, it’s said that a woodpecker ruled the world until Zeus took the sceptre from him. Picus – its Latin name – was the ancient god of fertility. In Britain, he has a strong association with our ancient orchards, which is why Bulmer’s used his image for their famous cider after it.

Another of our celebrity Green Woodpeckers is, of course, the wonderful Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss. Yaffle is in fact the woodpecker’s old English folk name, an onomatopoeic reference to its laughing call. There have been recorded no fewer than 400 Olde English names for the woodpecker, but few have survived down the ages. Some people, however, will still use the term “rainbird”, stemming from their supposed ability to bring on rain. This alleged talent is not just limited to our British birds, as the French name Pluie-pluie-pluie would suggest.

By Alex Killick, Friend and Denny Bottom resident

In years gone by ‘pannage’ pigs (domestic pigs kept in a wood, forest, or on common land, in order that they might forage for fallen acorns and the like) were kept on Rusthall Common. When I mentioned this to a member of the Friends of the Commons recently she enthusiastically declared: “I think I’d rather like that! Bring back the pigs!”

But should we bring them back to “follow the ways of their choosing!” (From a poem about pannage pigs, though I can’t remember who by). Should we revive this ancient practice and bring the commons to life once again with the sound of their snorting?

To answer this question perhaps we should look at what happens in the New Forest, where this custom continues to this day. Every year, at about this time, Commoners are allowed to let loose their pigs to clear up fallen acorns and nuts (which are poisonous to the ponies.) Apparently walkers sometimes find their peaceful reverie disturbed by a stampede of up to a dozen excitable pigs, but this excitement generally passes as quickly as it began.

On a personal note I would like to tell you about an encounter I had recently with a pig (or rather some pigs). I was at a garden party thrown by my partner’s boss and I noticed some pigs (of the rare breed variety) in the field opposite. They were waiting by the fence and I was immediately struck by the intelligence of their gaze, eyeing the guests speculatively as if to ascertain if there were any pig lovers present, who might bring them a treat. So myself and a friend went over and fed them windfall apples. They were very tame, like animals from a petting zoo, and kept up a companionable grunting all through the encounter (pig small talk?). I have read somewhere that pigs use up to 33 different vocalisations and are really quite chatty! I was so charmed I gave two of them my two favourites names: Beatrice and Eugenie (after the princesses of the same name). Afterwards they gambled away, one seeming to be chasing a butterfly. So, I don’t know about you, but I am definitely a convert. As Winston Churchill once said: “A dog looks up to you. Cats look down on you. Give me a pig. He just looks you in the eye and treats you like an equal.”

I rest my case.