Bohemia Village Voice

Old Haunts

The mild early spring day helped me to decide that this was the day to revisit the town of Tunbridge Wells, a favourite old haunt of mine.
As I slowly meander along the wide paved Pantiles, once the crinoline cat walk of ‘must be seen’ Georgians, I think that I would have liked to have visited this spa town in its heyday, when it was known as The Wells, and people flocked here to gamble, dance by candlelight, take the waters and generally misbehave.
A poster advertising a late evening ghost walk catches my eye, no new restless spirits seem to have joined the chap in the carpenter’s apron, the timber-hurling poltergeist or the Grey Lady waiting, in something of a time warp, at the window of a building at one end of The Pantiles for nigh on two hundred years.
I stop at the Chalybeate Spring for a glass of the restorative water, but the Dipper ruefully informs me that owing to the lack of rain the Spring has dried up. Learned physicians once gathered here, debating at length upon the content of the water. As yet, there have been no reported sightings of their astral counterparts. Shades of Dippers past, their strident voices berating those who failed to tip them for their services, do not disturb the unruffled calm of The Pantiles.
But suddenly, I am overwhelmed by a feeling of great urgency as part of the brickwork on the side of a building situated in one of the narrow alleys leading off The Pantiles, appears to dissolve and an anxious-looking lady can be seen standing over her maid, begging her to make haste with the packing of a large trunk. Her agitation is palpable.
Then, as suddenly as it had manifested, the scene melts away and I am left wondering if I will ever discover the reason for the lady’s anxiety.
Leaving the Upper Walk for the Lower Walk of The Pantiles, I reach the Corn Exchange presided over by a white statue of Ceres holding her scythe aloft, and I am most put out to see that the exhibition of life in Georgian times with its authentic room settings and life size fibre glass figures, has closed. I was hoping that a wraith or two, attracted by familiar surroundings, might have taken up residence.
A painting of the finely-braided and bewigged Richard Beau Nash, Master of Ceremonies at Bath and the Wells, shows him holding court before his companions.
Sarah Porter was recruited by Beau Nash to collect subscriptions and dues payable for the amenities at The Wells. She carried out her duties with the dogged tenacity of a Jack Russell, following each new visitor round the room, pen and book in hand, and has most probably re-incarnated more than once since the introduction of parking meters and yellow lines.
The courageous and enterprising Sarah Baker who kept her money in a row of punch-bowls on her desk, never encountered any financial difficulties and was admired by all for her fine bearing and graceful curtsey, built the second of her ten theatres on this site.
What sparks might have flown if this Governor-General and Sole Autocrat of Kentish Drama and Beau Nash had been contemporaries?
Into the light and airy coffee shop for refreshment, and suddenly an audible rustle and glimpse of rose pink silk, the click of a fan and the sound of low laughter as, caught in a nuance of perception, two elegant ladies glide past.