Escape to the Kentish Low Weald

With its unspoilt pattern of low-lying meadows, gently sloping orchards, pretty weatherboarded villages and medieval manor houses, this lush corner of England combines fertile beauty with ancient charm

Few Eurostar passengers, fidgeting on the trundle through Kent, realise that they are in fact skirting an English arcadia. Kent the county may call itself “the Garden of England”, but more accurately, the “garden” is a specific area, the Weald. This is an ancient rolling woodland long tamed into a bucolic, intimate pattern of orchards, meadows, coppices and hopfields.

At its heart is the Kentish Low Weald. Around the small rivers of Beult, Eden, Medway and Teise spread low-lying meadows, ponds and sunken lanes, and a profusion of gently sloping orchards and hop farms. It is edged by wooded sandstone ridges near Edenbridge to the west and rolling open pastures bordering Romney Marsh to the east. The Greensand ridge holds back the urban sprawl of the Medway towns, while the High Weald divides it from the rolling South Downs. And at its heart is the genteel jewel of Royal Tunbridge Wells.

Kent has more listed buildings than any other county. The Low Weald’s many fine mansions were built by the nouveau riche of every period, from Tudor cloth and iron families to Victorian romantic revivalists. For decades this rural reverie was to be rudely disturbed every summer by armies of East End hop and fruit pickers who would descend for their annual working holiday. Their presence lent this luscious area a dangerously lascivious under-tow, embodied by HE Bates’s merry yet knowing character Pop Larkin, made popular by the TV series The Darling Buds of May.

Nowadays the rowdy pickers have all but disappeared. Commuting city slickers – today’s nouveau riche – still appropriate the finest houses. But if you walk, cycle or drive around the innumerable small lanes, passing a pond here, a substantial timbered farmhouse there, between a coppiced woodland and a sheep-grazed meadow, you’ll find a landscape less than an hour from London where very little has changed for centuries.

Heritage
The medieval castles and moated manor houses were built more for show than defence. When the Astor family bought the 13th-century Hever Castle (01732 865224; www.hever-castle.co.uk) in 1903, they had it extended to the rear with a fake Tudor village. By far the finest moated home is the National Trust’s spectacular 1330 Ightham Mote (01732 810378), whose 18-year restoration is near its end.
Another NT property, the romantic Scotney Castle Garden (01892 891081), boasts a moated and ruined castle at its heart. Sissinghurst Castle Garden (01580 710701; www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sissinghurst/), too, has its own moat and lone Elizabethan tower. Its famous and influential white garden was planned as a rose garden by Vita Sackville-West and Sir Harold Nicolson when they bought the property in 1930 and only became a white garden after the war.

The Elizabethan Palace of Knole (01732 450608) contains such delicate silver and silken treasures that only 1,000 hours of sunlight a year are allowed to reach them. It stands at the top of a spectacular deer park still visibly devastated by the 1987 storms. Just as breathtaking is Penshurst Place (01892 870307; www.penshurstplace.com), former home of Sir Philip Sidney, where you step straight into the awesome 14th-century Baron’s Hall, complete with open hearth and minstrels’ gallery.

Villages & views
Tile hung, timbered and weatherboarded, you’ll see one pretty little village after another in the Low Weald: Penshurst, Ide Hill, Ightham, Pluckley, Biddenden, Chiddingstone, Goudhurst. Smarden, with its white picket fences, is the classic rural idyll, while The Darling Buds of May was filmed at Pluckley.

The area is also crisscrossed with marked walks. The Greensand Way and The Weald Way cover the north. The Medway Valley and Eden Valley Walks and the Tunbridge Wells Circular Walk deal with the low ground. And the High Weald Landscape Trail and parts of the Sussex Border Path take care of the rest.

The combination of twisting lanes, frequent woods and several minor ridges produces some stunning views. A good starting place is the well at Toy’s Hill. Then there are the twists and turns of Penshurst Road coming out of Tunbridge Wells through Speldhurst. Look south from Ide Hill (where someone has kindly left a stump to stand on to see the view when the trees are in full leaf) over Bough Beech Reservoir. And the wiggly little lane from Frittenden to Staplehurst is all coppiced woods and charming old houses. There are beautiful views, too, from Sir Winston Churchill’s home at Chartwell (01732 866368).

Shopping
You are in antiques heaven here, with more than 10 shops in Tunbridge Wells alone and more in the surrounding villages. There is a cluster of shops around the church at the top of St Johns Road in Royal Tunbridge Wells, including Up Country at no 68 (01892 523341) which sells rural artifacts, the Architectural Emporium (01892 540368) – great for salvage – and Phoenix Antiques at nos. 53-55 (01892 549099).

Fans of the clean Scandinavian and French country looks should make a beeline for Maison at 64 Mount Pleasant Road (01892 547755), Tunbridge Wells’s exclusive Cath Kidston outlet, and Old Colonial (01892 533993; www.oldcolonial.biz) at 56 St Johns Road.

While in Tunbridge Wells, try on sassy cashmere and linen separates at Rachel Tolhurst (01892 617440) in Ely Court, off Royal Victoria Place, and browse both floors of the famous Halls second-hand bookshop at 20-22 Chapel Place (01892 527842; www.hallsbookshop.com). And at the heart of the gentry’s old promenade, the Pantiles, you will find Trevor Mottram, ironmonger extraordinaire (01892 538915), selling copper utensils and huge circular chopping blocks. While in the Pantiles, have a glass of iron-rich mineral water from the Chalybeate Spring, said to cure all ills.

Crops
Buy your soft fruit from Downingbury Farm, Pembury (01892 824282) and fish at Jay’s Fish Products of Chiddingstone (01732 743377). HG Tompsett & Sons at Staplehurst (01580 891344) sells hops on the bine for decoration, as used at the Hotel du Vin in Royal Tunbridge Wells.
Visit Yalding Organic Gardens (01622 814650), which has recreated 14 organic gardens from the medieval period to World War Two.

And don’t miss Biddenden Vineyard and Cider Works (01580 291726; www.biddendenvineyards.com) or the award-winning walled cottage garden at Old Buckhurst, Markbeech (01483 211535; www.oldbuckhurst.co.uk).

Hidden highlights
•    The forge at Penshurst with its huge horseshoe-shaped doorway, now serves as a village store.
•    The Spotted Dog (01892 870253), on Smarts Hill, has some of the best views in Kent and a menu to match. Enjoy a homemade steak and kidney pie or fillet steak with port and stilton sauce.
•    It’s worth a trip to Four Elms for the quirky contents of Yew Tree Antiques (01732 700215).
•    Hole up in the “cubby” at the Bottlehouse Inn (01892 870306), Smarts Hill, with more doggy pictures than you could shake a stick at.
•    Seek out the trestle table repaired with wooden hearts and fishes in the Baron’s Hall at Penshurst Place (01892 870307).
•    The original Knole sofa at Knole (01732 450608) is not what you’d imagine. Its padded side panels hinge off ordinary arms, and it was used as a formal throne.

A Napoleonic stagger
Length: 6km. Start: Three Chimneys, near Biddenden.
Map: Landranger 188 TQ 827/388
When Napoleonic prisoners of war were held at nearby Sissinghurst Castle, this ale house stood at the crossroads that marked the outer limits of the officers’ “parole”, or licence to walk out freely. They gave the 15th-century building its name – a corruption of “trois chemins” or “the three ways”.
•    Retrace the officers’ scenic stagger home by parking in front of the Three Chimneys (01580 291472), easily visible just north of the A262 between Biddenden and Sissinghurst. (The nearest bus is the no 12 from Maidstone to Rye, which stops outside The Weavers pub in Biddenden). Take the lane to the left of the beer garden for 500m until you see a small pond to your left.
•    Opposite this, just past the drive to Bettenham Barn, is a hard-to-spot stile, which is a right of way. Follow the path northeast across fields, a stream and a lane until you reach a row of trees. Continue down the left-hand side of these trees, keeping the spire of Frittenden church ahead to your right, until you reach a small bridge over the Hammer stream. Beyond more fields you’ll reach Brissenden Farm. Turn left into the lane and follow it to a T-junction.
•    Cross over to a bridlepath directly ahead. Follow this for 2km uphill until a track crosses the bridleway by a small farmhouse. Turn left here, picking up a footpath which runs parallel with the track, but on the other side of the hedge. This takes you, via the car park, to Sissinghurst.
•    Pick up the track again downhill past the left-hand side of the castle and head north west. After 500m you’ll hit a lane. Turn right here, past a small pine plantation and Bettenham Manor on your left. Continue until you’re back at the Three Chimneys. Relax with a pint of dry cider, as refreshing and heady as a pale white wine.
Adapted from Pub Walks in Kent by David Hancock (Power Publications, £4.95).

Hops

The brick roundels and white cowls of oast houses, where hops were dried, dominate the Low Weald. Hops have been used since the 14th century to make beer last longer. These hedgerow plants were trained up posts, and men on stilts were needed to tend their tips. Hop pickers were notoriously rowdy and lived in squalid stable-like shanties, which can still be seen in hopfields outside Goudhurst.

Don’t miss...

The unprepossessing All Saints Church at Tudeley-cum-Capel has stained glass windows designed by the great Russian/French artist Marc Chagall. Only completed in the 1980s, in luminous deep blues and stirring yellows, they were commissioned to commemorate the death of a local girl in a sailing accident in 1963. Absolutely unmissable.

Where to eat
Chiddingstone
● The Castle Inn (01892 870247; www.castleinn.co.uk)
A well-run and ancient inn opposite a church and a castle. Fine dining, bar snacks and a lovely sheltered garden. Open 11am-11pm.
Penshurst
● Fir Tree House Tea Rooms (01892 870382)
The best tea rooms in Kent, if not the UK: wooden benches, open fire, jasmine-scented garden and a smoky Earl Grey (£1.30).
Petteridge
● The Hopbine (01892 722561)
“Perfick” for hot summer days. A tiny weatherboarded place, recommended by CAMRA, with a steep-terraced, shady garden.
Tunbridge Wells
Organica (01892 616330)
An organic café in the Pantiles, which also sells the Dr Hauschka skincare range and organic lifestyle products such as French organic linen. Their delicious small quiches are ideal for picnics.
Sophie’s (01892 547400)
A French candle-lit bistro, just up the High Road from the Pantiles, serves a classic steak frites, Tues-Sat. Fantastically Gallic.
Thackeray’s (01892 511921; www.thackerays-restaurant.co.uk)
Home of the author of Vanity Fair, this recently converted, Grade II-listed townhouse is a popular restaurant (not surprising, considering its baked halibut fillet with a wild mushroom crust, braised leeks, white asparagus & five spice sauce).

Where to stay

● The Chequers Inn, Smarden (01233 770217)
In the heart of this idyllic village, this weatherboarded 14th-century inn with rooms is as quaint as they come. Five rooms.
● Hoath House,Chiddingstone Hoath (01342 850362; www.hoathhouse.co.uk). The Streatfeilds run their half-timbered home with old-fashioned class and relaxed charm. Children and book lovers welcome. B&B.
● Hotel du Vin, Tunbridge Wells (01892 526455; www.hotelduvin.com)
This elegant and central Georgian townhouse is next to the stunning Calverley Park crescent. Beds and baths are huge, staff are easygoing. 34 rooms.
● Ightham Mote, Sevenoaks (01225 791199)
Play at stately-home living in one or both of the NT’s holiday cottages. One sleeps five, the other three.
● The Oast House, Ulcombe (Freedom Holiday Homes 01580 720770)
A surprisingly spacious converted oast house next door to the owners’ own timbered farmhouse. Sleeps five. No children under five.
● Sissinghurst Castle Farm, Cranbrook (01580 712885). A large Victorian brick farmhouse with great views. Six bedrooms. No dogs or under-fives. B&B.

General information
● Tunbridge Wells TIC: 01892 515675;
● Tenterden TIC: 01580 763572;
● Edenbridge TIC: 01732 868110;
● Maidstone TIC: 01622 602169.

Useful websites
www.tunbridgewells.gov.uk/tourism; www.khwp.org.uk; www.thegrapevine.co.uk (parents’ guide to area).

How to get there

Map: Landranger 188.
Roads: Easily accessible from the M25 and M20.
Transport: Connex trains from London Bridge run through Edenbridge, Tonbridge and Paddock Wood. Connex also has trains from Charing Cross to Hastings via Tunbridge Wells. Call 0845 748 4950 or visit www.connex.co.uk. The Kent and East Sussex Steam Railway (01580 765155; www.kesr.org.uk) runs from Tenterden to Bodiam. The Spa Valley Railway (01892 537715; www.spavalleyrailway.co.uk) runs from Tunbridge Wells to Groombridge. Buses are few. Call 0870 6082608 for details.

Special events

Tudeley Festival of early classical music (01732 773322; www.tudeleyfestival.org.uk). Open-air music and theatre at Ightham Mote and Scotney Castle (0870 240 3017).

Disabled Access: An access guide to the area is available from tourist
offices or call 01892 540307.
King Charles Hall, Tunbridge Wells, Saturday collectors fairs/flea markets (call 01892 520668 for dates).

Photo: Kent Tourism www.kenttourism.co.uk
 

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