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Community action/Tunbridge Wells

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The Pantiles, Royal Tunbridge Wells The Pantiles, looking South West. Author: Paul Collins
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The aim of this page is to recognise, celebrate and encourage the self-empowerment of community agency networks (CANs) and community groups' activism for climate, environment and many other sustainability topics across Tunbridge Wells.

Tunbridge Wells
Kent
UK
Europe
Cosmolocal
  • News Ardingly Reservoir falls below 20% as drought persists, BBC News (Oct 14, 2026)
  • News Four new councils confirmed for Kent and Medway, BBC News (Jul 16, 2026) — North Kent: Dartford, Gravesham, and Medway; West Kent: Sevenoaks, Tonbridge and Malling, Maidstone, and Tunbridge Wells; Mid Kent: Swale, Ashford, and Folkestone and Hythe; East Kent: Canterbury, Thanet and Dover
  • News What happens when the taps run dry? England is about to find out, Aditya Chakrabortty, theguardian.com (Jan 22, 2026)
  • News Kent Wildlife Trust purchases land for rewilding project, BBC News (Sep 11, 2025)
  • News Charity preparing to take legal action against a government decision to permit a housing development in part of the Kent countryside, BBC News (Dec 20, 2024)
  • News Pay as you feel café celebrates busy start as community hub, timeslocalnews.co.uk (Feb 28, 2024)
  • News Plans for major overhaul of councils halted, BBC News (Sep 07, 2026)
  • News The UK towns at risk of running out of water within six weeks, inews.co.uk (Aug 12, 2026)
  • News ‘It’s irreplaceable’: Fury over Reform plans to expand quarry in ancient Kent woodland, theguardian.com (Jul 30, 2026)
  • News Firefighters voice growing concerns over water supplies to tackle UK wildfires, theguardian.com (Oct 21, 2026) — Housing development recognised as one of a number of pressures increasing demand on an already stretched water network
  • News Severe drought declared in six areas of England as reservoirs run low, theguardian.com (Oct 15, 2026)
  • News Ardingly Reservoir falls below 20% as drought persists, BBC News (Oct 14, 2026)
  • News Citizens need to power Europe's future, demnext.substack.com (Oct 02, 2026) — The EU can enable new democratic institutions: in European countries; with a European Citizens’ Assembly as a 4th branch of government, and by legally enforcing the Global Citizens’ Assembly on AI, Claudia Chwalisz and Another Democratic Future
  • News Reclaiming the streets: the architects clawing back Europe’s car-centric spaces, theguardian.com (Sep 09, 2026) — The European Prize for Urban Public Space’s shortlist highlights projects helping people cope with climate crisis
  • News We’re the mayors of Paris, Milan and Phoenix. The heat crisis has us all facing the same question, Emmanuel Grégoire, Giuseppe Sala and Kate Gallego, theguardian.com (Sep 07, 2026) — Our three cities are learning from each other about how to protect residents. These climate policies are also public health measures
  • News Giving £2 a day to people in the Amazon helps protect rainforest, pilot project finds, theguardian.com (Oct 20, 2026)
  • News From Protesting To Worldmaking, Alternative Editorial (Oct 18, 2026)
  • News Hunter Valley community group wins landmark high court climate change case over coalmine, theguardian.com (Oct 07, 2026) — Ruling on Mount Pleasant coalmine shows ‘we cannot continue to dig up coal … and pretend the consequences have nothing to do with us’, group says

UK and international events

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UK events

  • Event Nov 9 - 15, 2026 (Mon - Sun) — Living Wage Week, livingwage.org.uk
  • Event Nov 13, 2026 (Fri) — Kindness Day UK, Nov 13 annually, aiming to increase the value of kindness in society as well as increase the amount of kind acts that take place, making kindness a greater part in our daily life, kindnessuk.com
  • Event Nov 15 - 21, 2026 (Sun - Sat) — Road Safety Week, brake.org.uk
  • Event Nov 21 - 29, 2026 (Sat - Sun) — National Tree Week, The Tree Council's annual tree celebration. People across the country planting thousands of trees to mark the start of the winter tree planting season. "Trees and hedgerows are some of the most powerful tools we have in the fight against climate change.", treecouncil.org.uk

UK community action events

Global or international events

  • Event Nov 05, 2026 (Thu) — Media Liberation Day, Change the Media, Change the Future, mediarevolution.org
  • Event Nov 13, 2026 (Fri) — World Kindness Day, Nov 13, annually, highlighting good deeds in the community focusing on the positive power and the common thread of kindness for good which binds us, randomactsofkindness.org
  • Event Nov 15, 2026 (Sun) — World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, third Sunday in November each year, worlddayofremembrance.org
  • Event Nov 16, 2026 (Mon) — International Day for Tolerance, Nov 16 each year, fostering respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world's cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human, unesco.org
  • Event Nov 19, 2026 (Thu) — International Men's Day, Nov 19, annually
  • Event Nov 27, 2026 (Fri) — Citizen Friday, actionism.space
  • Event Nov 27 & 28, 2026 — Buy Nothing Day, en.wikipedia.org

2021-2030, UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, International community action events

CDC videos

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Cosmolocal discovery club

Each week 3 different short videos from across the UK or world.

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Building a Secure Cycling Network, Cyclehoop, The Power of Cycling
Authors: European Cyclists' Federation and Content With Purpose, 3.36 mins.
Date: 2026-09-15
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When will the drought end?
Authors: Tom Edwards, BBC London, 3.07 mins.
Date: 2026-08-26
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The Route Forward
Authors: Cycling UK, 6.13 mins.
Date: 2026-09-22

Community action/United Kingdom/Cycling activism, Community action/South East England/Saving water / ...This week's featured Global videos / ... read more about Cosmolocalism

Tunbridge Wells videos

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Hoathly Farm - help us restore nature in Lamberhurst
Authors: Kent Wildlife Trust, 2.00 mins.
Date: 2025-03-31

Cranbrook Union Mill

Community resources

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Cranbrook Community Centre on facebook.com

Reduce, reuse, repair and recycle

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Pemburyrecycle

Ethical consumerism

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The Zero Waste Company

Open spaces

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Friends of Calverley Grounds on facebook, community group looking after the park in the centre of Tunbridge Wells

The Pantiles and its chalybeate spring have been the landmarks most readily associated with Royal Tunbridge Wells ever since the founding of the town, though the 5-metre-high (16 ft) steel Millennium Clock at the Fiveways area in the centre of town, designed by local sculptor Jon Mills for the Millennium celebrations, stakes a claim to be a modern landmark.

Tunbridge Wells contains green spaces that range from woodland to maintained grounds and parks. The most substantial areas of woodland are the Tunbridge Wells and Rusthall Commons, which comprise 250 acres (100 hectares) of wood and heathland and are close to the centre of the town. Open areas of the common are popular picnic spots, and there is a maintained cricket ground situated next to Wellington Rocks.

Located in the town centre opposite the railway station, Calverley Grounds is a historic park with ornamental gardens and a bandstand (now demolished). The park was part of Mount Pleasant House, which was converted into a hotel in 1837, until 1920, when the borough council purchased it for the town. The bandstand dated from 1924 and was damaged by an incendiary bomb in 1940 and parts of the metalwork were sold for scrap metal. The subsequently repaired bandstand and the adjacent pavilion were intended to form part of a new centre to the park but were never completed. The bandstand was demolished in 2010 although the pavilion still exists as a café. Just inside the entrance to the park coming from the station is a memorial to Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, hero of the Battle of Britain, who lived and died in Tunbridge Wells.

Dunorlan Park, at 78 acres (32 hectares) the largest maintained green space in the town, was once a private garden that was part of the millionaire Henry Reed's now demolished mansion, and only passed into public possession in 1941. The gardens were designed by the Victorian gardener James Green, but over the years they became overgrown, making it hard to distinguish the full scope of Marnock's design. In 1996 Tunbridge Wells Borough Council applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a grant to restore the park in line with the original designs, and in 2003/4 Dunorlan underwent a £2.8 million restoration. The River Teise rises in the park, and two dams on it have created a pond and a boating lake. Dunorlan is listed as Grade II on English Heritage's National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

Great Culverden Park is a 9+1⁄2-acre woodland in the Mount Ephraim area behind the site of the old Kent and Sussex Hospital and is the remnant grounds of the previous Great Culverden House designed by Decimus Burton that used to stand on Mount Ephraim.

The oldest public park in Tunbridge Wells is Grosvenor Recreation Ground designed by landscape architect Robert Marnock, located close to the town centre on Quarry Road. It was opened in 1889 by Mayor John Stone-Wigg, on the land that was formerly Caverley Waterworks. The lake area with dripping wells remains, but the other lakes, bandstand and open air pool have all gone. There is a bowls club, café, toilets and children's play area, including cycle track. It is adjoined by the Hilbert recreation ground, parts of which have been designated as a local nature reserve by the Kent High Weald Partnership; these include Roundabout Woods and the adjoining grass areas. The Hilbert Recreation Ground was donated to the town by Cllr Edward Strange in 1931, on the site of the form John Beane's Charity Farm. There are two football pitches, built as part of the King George V playing fields scheme, and a skatepark.

Trees, woodland and forest

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Bedgebury Forest is a 10.5 square kilometres (2,600 acres) forest surrounding Bedgebury National Pinetum, near Flimwell in Kent. In contrast to the National Pinetum, which contains exclusively coniferous trees, the forest contains both deciduous and coniferous species. It forms part of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and is one of the so-called "Seven Wonders Of The Weald". Bedgebury Forest has facilities for cycling, mountain biking, riding, orienteering and adventure play.

About Tunbridge Wells

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Royal Tunbridge Wells (formerly, until 1909, and still commonly Tunbridge Wells) is a town in Kent, England, 30 miles (50 kilometres) southeast of Central London. It lies close to the border with East Sussex on the northern edge of the High Weald, whose sandstone geology is exemplified by the rock formation High Rocks. The town was a spa in the Restoration and a fashionable resort in the mid-1700s under Beau Nash when the Pantiles, and its chalybeate spring, attracted visitors who wished to take the waters. Though its popularity as a spa town waned with the advent of sea bathing, the town still derives much of its income from tourism. The prefix "Royal" was granted to it in 1909 by King Edward VII; it is one of only four towns in England with the title.

The town had a population of 59,947 in 2016, and is the administrative centre of Tunbridge Wells Borough and in the parliamentary constituency of Tunbridge Wells.

Near you

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Ashford - Maidstone - Sevenoaks - Tonbridge

See also

Page data
Keywords Sustainable community action
SDG SDG11 Sustainable cities and communities
Authors Phil Green
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 1 pages link here
Redirects Tunbridge Wells community action
Views 22 page views (analytics)
Created January 31, 2022 by Phil Green
Last edit September 16, 2026 by Felipe Schenone
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