The fascinating spa plans for Tunbridge Wells that never happened - this is why

The exclusive news of a £500,000 spa development once had everyone in Tunbridge Wells talking.

This was 1935 and a reporter at KentLive's sister paper the Kent and Sussex Courier wrote of the proposed international health centre based on the town’s spa heritage: “All eyes are now centred on Tunbridge Wells for it is to be brought back into prominence as the world’s finest Spa.”

It was expected to bring 200,000 visitors a year and create employment for 1,000 people.

Based on the health-giving properties of our local waters, the vast spa had treatment rooms, a horseshoe-shaped restaurant around a large indoor swimming pool, a wave-making machine, showers, a huge grand entrance with receptionists, a terrace running all the way around and light courts, presumably where people could sit out behind glass.

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Bottling plant

As part of it a bottling plant would make bottles of water from the estate’s spring which was described as “the purest you could find in the world” said Leon Lewit, the Russian “worldwide spa expert” who was putting up the money.

Called Sherwood Park Spa, it was to be built in the beautiful estate of Sherwood Park.

Sherwood Park, the former house at this time was already an international health clinic, but as the below drawings show, the spa centre took things to a grandiose level.

Tunbridge Wells Museum’s research curator, Dr Ian Beavis, revealed this fascinating story and shared with us most of these spectacular pictures. He told us about the man with the vision heading the consortium of businessmen with half a million to invest.

“Leon Lewit feels like a rather flamboyant entrepreneur. This Russian spa expert comes up with plans which wow everybody and the council and the Chamber of Commerce and obviously the local press and puts out these wonderful pictures of what it’s going to be like."

No evidence

He added: “There’s no evidence any of these plans have got to the detailed design stage.

"There’s nothing in the council’s planning minutes to suggest he presented them.”

The spa was never built and failed arbitration over a restrictive covenant on the land may have contributed to its failure to get off the ground, along with the bottling plant being rejected by planners as “over development”.

Dr Beavis said: “It is such a wonderful and spectacular design, you can’t help feeling how sad it is it never came to fruition.”

This is what we need in Tunbridge Wells - column by Mary Harris

Look at it! Look. At. It.

This beauty is the Thermae Bath Spa in Bath. Bath is a spa town. Tunbridge Wells is a spa town. Alright, we’re a bit of a poor relation because we haven’t got a natural thermal spa. Actually, neither has any other town or city. Bath is the only one.

But being a spa town means we have a mineral spring which at one time was very important to us, and people visited (and some of them stayed because it was just what the doctor ordered) as they’d heard our waters would cure their ailments.

Tunbridge Wells was quite the place for the rich and famous to be seen in the 17th century.

Fast forward four centuries and the tsunami of excitement about our Chalybeate Spring has become little more than a trickle. In fact, our temperamental spring has stopped even trickling a couple of times in recent years and once had some sort of bacteria which meant we couldn’t drink it for a while.

By the way, the cheapskate that I am, you don’t need to ‘take the waters’ as it’s called at Bath House on The Pantiles. You can go to Dunorlan and sink your mouth into the wide stone bowl of Chalybeate spring water, where here too it comes to the surface.

But back to this beautiful picture of Bath. I used the picture in 2017 to go with an article I wrote about six towns which appeared to maximise their ‘spa-ness’.

I would love to see Tunbridge Wells make more of itself as a spa town. And it’s a Royal spa town to boot!

My dream would be a huge health spa with saunas, jacuzzi, plunge pools, outdoor and indoor lidos, water-based treatments, plunge pools, baby and children water areas, Turkish baths for those who really want to go for it, and best of all, what I’ve termed a “flopping around area” with vast expanses of luxury bedouin style seating where you can have refreshments and forget about your stresses.

There could be healthy restaurants, beauty treatments for men and women, even a shop selling specially-designed Tunbridge Wells merchandise. There could be a hotel too, which could offer spa packages.

It needs a very rich investor, it’s not something the council could do. I reckon this is worth investigating as an idea. While not unique, it is different.

And a clever resident, Sarah Wright, suggested we could re-brand the town as ‘Tunbridge Wellness’. Clever, right? Think of the cool logo we could develop. And think of all the existing businesses which would benefit from the town being a ‘wellness’ magnet - the beauty clinics, our yoga and fitness studios, our gyms, our osteopaths and other professionals, our nutritionist and even our plastic surgeons.

I’m going to avoid controversy by saying where I think it could be built.

But what I will say is...imagine sitting in an azure pool on a rooftop terrace overlooking a beautiful park on a sunny day.

Please do get in touch with me, whether it’s to comment on this column or anything else about Tunbridge Wells.

You can email me at
mary.harris@reachplc.com or write to me: Mary Harris, KentLive, Calverley Road, Tunbridge Wells, TN1 2UN