St. Barnabas’ Tunbridge Wells

St. Barnabas' Tunbridge Wells

For the past three years St. Barnabas' church, Stanley Road, Tunbridge Wells, has been the venue for an increasingly ambitious historical exhibition, organised in connection with the Heritage Open Days in September - details are given elsewhere in the Newsletter. The history of the church is a classic example of the rise of the Tractarian movement, described by Nigel Yates in the Spring edition. The parish has its origins in a small Mission Church built in 1870 in an area which was fast being developed with working class cottages, and the early years saw much controversy. The establishment of an avowedly Tractarian parish in a district dominated by the Evangelical wing of the Church of England was vigorously opposed, not least by Canon Edward Hoare, Vicar of Holy Trinity, 'the Protestant Pontiff of Tunbridge Wells'.

Despite this, the church flourished, and the present cathedral-sized building, designed by the Cutts brothers, was erected in 1887-88 at the enormous cost of £17,000. The Exhibition covers not only the history of the building itself, its schools, clergy and people, but also the development of the area, in which the first Tunbridge Wells railway station had been built. Many industrial buildings were subsequently erected, most of which have now been demolished.

The Exhibition has attracted considerable numbers of visitors, and as a result some interesting discoveries have come to light. One such which will be on display this year will be photographs from a scrapbook of c1900 featuring a large local employer, the Baltic Sawmills.

Above: St. Barnabas' Church towers over the surrounding buildings.

Left: The interior is equally impressive.

Geoffrey Copus