page_title: List of places of worship in Tunbridge Wells (borough)
section_title: Overview of the borough and its places of worship
hierarchical_section_title: List of places of worship in Tunbridge Wells (borough) / Overview of the borough and its places of worship
caption_attribution_description: St Mark's Church, Broadwater Down, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Borough of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. The Anglican parish church of the Broadwater Down area of Royal Tunbridge Wells.
context_page_description: The borough of Tunbridge Wells, one of 13 local government districts in the English county of Kent, has nearly 130 current and former places of worship. The mostly rural area is dominated by the prosperous spa town of Royal Tunbridge Wells and its suburbs, such as Southborough, Pembury and Langton Green. Many of the borough's current and former churches and chapels are in the town, as are the two non-Christian places of worship. Ancient parish churches and small Nonconformist chapels characterise the villages and hamlets elsewhere in the borough, which borders East Sussex in the southwestern part of Kent. As of 2020, 87 places of worship are in use in the borough, serving many Christian denominations and followers of Islam and the Subud movement. A further 37 former places of worship no longer hold religious services but survive in alternative uses.
  The majority of Tunbridge Wells residents identify themselves as Christian.
context_section_description: The borough of Tunbridge Wells covers 33,133 hectares (81,870 acres) of southwest Kent next to the county of East Sussex. In 2011 the population of the borough was 115,200: just over half lived in the main towns of Royal Tunbridge Wells and Southborough, which together had an estimated population of 56,600 in 2006. Other large villages include the ancient Cranbrook, Goudhurst and Lamberhurst and the more modern Paddock Wood and Pembury. The fertile, undulating and sparsely populated Weald, from whose northern edge the North Downs rise sharply, dominates the rest of the area. Christianity reached England via Kent: in 597 Augustine was sent from Rome by Pope Gregory I to convert the population, and several 7th-century ecclesiastical buildings survive in the county. In this westernmost part of the county, though, most surviving churches date from after the Norman conquest in the late 11th century. Many parish churches date from the 12th century, "as busy a time for building [these] in Kent as for cathedral and monastic works". A typical form consists of a nave without aisles and a smaller, lower chancel, usually without an apse; examples in the borough survive in small villages such as Bidborough and Capel Churches in the larger villages such as Cranbrook, Goudhurst and Hawkhurst date from between the 13th and 15th centuries, having replaced older buildings. Large-scale churchbuilding resumed in the Victorian era, when "decadence and decay" had ruined many churches and population growth and the results of a religious census encouraged the Church of England to improve its provision of buildings for worship. Holy Trinity Church in Royal Tunbridge Wells was expensively funded and designed by prominent architect Decimus Burton at the same time as he was designing the town's most fashionable residential areas; the richly decorated Christ Church at Kilndown, a village with no church, has been "an object of national interest" since its completion in the 1840s; Holy Trinity at Sissinghurst bankrupted its builder but continues to serve its village; and new churches were provided much nearer the centres of population in villages such as Pembury and Horsmonden. Southborough's transformation into a small town and suburb of Royal Tunbridge Wells resulted in four Anglican churches being built between 1830 and 1886, including a mission chapel (now a separate parish church) at High Brooms. The single postwar Anglican church serves a new housing estate in Royal Tunbridge Wells.
  Protestant Nonconformist denominations found great support in Kent, especially during the 19th century, and many of their chapels survive in the borough of Tunbridge Wells. In the similar sized neighbouring county of Sussex, 244 such chapels opened between 1818 and 1901, against 765 in Kent. Methodism was followed particularly strongly: 325 Methodist chapels (including Wesleyan, Primitive, Bible Christian and others) were built during that period, against 327 Anglican churches; Baptists and Congregationalists each gained over 150 new places of worship; and nearly 150 meeting rooms, chapels and halls for other denominations were opened. The decline of Methodism since its Victorian heyday and the amalgamation of its various strands into one denomination means that only three chapels are still in use in the borough, along with a shared Anglican and Methodist church at Paddock Wood. Former chapels, some of which closed as recently as the early 21st century, are found in many villages. Calvinism, "the characteristic religion of rural Kent", made its mark in places such as Matfield, Cranbrook, Lamberhurst and Southborough, each of which has a surviving Strict Baptist chapel. These are "typically small, neat, plain, porched and with a Hebrew name": Matfield's is called Ebenezer, as is a former chapel at Hawkhurst, and other closed chapels for Calvinistic Baptists include Providence (Cranbrook and Curtisden Green), Rehoboth (Royal Tunbridge Wells) and Jehovah Jireh (in a hamlet near Brenchley). The United Reformed Church, successor to the Congregational Church whose follower
caption: Churchbuilding and the fashionable spa town of Royal Tunbridge Wells both boomed in the 19th century; many new Anglican churches, such as St Mark's (1864–66), were provided there.
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