Degustation of Tunbridge Wells

Can the arrival of a Pig Hotel save the town of Tunbridge Wells from terminal decline? Guest writer Lisse Garnett investigates.

Time has not been kind to Royal Tunbridge Wells. Deserted by John Lewis, dissed by its inhabitants; the Opera House a Wetherspoons, its listed Old West Station an American-themed eaterie where dull-eyed servers peddle scripted lines. The once fine town centre is dominated by a double-decade old weed-marred building lot, where before stood a stylish Deco cinema. Most ghastly of all is news that the foulest serial killer and necrophile ever to live was collared working in the old Kent and Sussex Hospital morgue. Disgusting of Tunbridge Wells

Now demolished Decimus Burton villas

Where once there stood a proud parade of Decimus Burton villas, sits the terrible Tunbridge Wells Town Hall whose incumbents might well be to blame for the dire traffic and appalling state of the locale and its roads. Gorgeously laid out by Decimus Burton, beloved by camp regency socialite Beau Nash but today the Borough lags far behind its counterparts Bath and Cheltenham. There has been little positive planning progress in the past 50 years.

Enterprising small hospitality businesses such as the TW Forum have ceaselessly strived to reinvigorate the jaded town but the council have consistently failed to show a modicum of the forward-thinking enterprise required for the task. And terribly trying it is for the many aspirant residents in blacked out 4-wheel drives, forced to fight for parking spaces and grammar school slots for their endlessly hot housed and routinely chauffeured children. There is little a would be selective school parent won’t do to acquire a school place. Home tutors are sacred and churches temporarily mob-attended.

Hotel du Vin, graciously housed in a sizeable Burton villa, now flanked by a ghastly brutalist office block and multi storey car park, was quite the place when owned by Robin Hutson and a Frenchman who would go on to be something of a legend in the British wine world, the late Gerard Basset. Enjoyed by wine luminaries as impressive as Jancis Robinson and boasting its own tiny vineyard, the chain has yet to attain its former heights after being sold to Malmaison in 2004. Indeed, complain the residents, there is nowhere ‘decent’ to eat. Fast food is improving, 5 Guys moved in and Pret is booming. The High Street Ivy alas has the élan of a mid-90s Russian brothel, desperately populated with furtive eyed 40-somethings keen to connect but chasing the same solitary candidate. For this is prime married heartland where Londoners go to mate, do Pilates and walk fat shit-eating labradoodles on the Common.

Groombridge Place - site of the newest Pig Hotel

But all this may be about to change and the towns well-heeled residents are febrile with anticipation. For four miles outside the Royal Borough is the utopian village of Groombridge where Robin Hutson has bought moated Groombridge Place. Here he will house the latest Pig. Modestly described as ‘restaurants with rooms’, you may not be rad enough to be aware of The Pig chains famed epicurean skill, its eclectic décor nor its infinite and brilliant wine list, laden with gorgeous treats from this fair isle. An endorsement of this colossal magnitude is keenly felt by local residents who might once again raise their faces to the sun and bathe in the sweet air, knowing they were right to move out of London after all.

A house has existed at Groombridge Place for centuries. A small moated castle is recorded in 1239. Charles, Duke of Orléans and poet was imprisoned there following the Battle of Agincourt. His melancholy works on captivity may well have been penned within its walls. Flogged by a naughty Sackville to pay off gaming debts, it was then rebuilt in an English Baroque style by Patron Philip Packer and a young Christopher Wren, who would go on to build 52 churches in the City of London following the Great Fire of 1666.

Hutson is no dilletante. A huge advocate of English wine, his sommeliers have been “actively supressing”, as he puts it, sales of champagne and proffering English alternatives for years. Three of his Pigs lie in English vineyard heaven; Bridge Place near Canterbury on the chalky North Downs, the Pig in the South Downs on the same Kimmeridgian Clay as Champagne complete with its own vineyard, and now Groombridge Place, which also has its very own planted out back. 

Hutson employs over 900 people, some 75 of whom are apprentices. Key to creating a viable English wine route, Hutson and Basset’s widow Nina have been vociferous in calling for a dedicated hospitality minister too. Crazy to think hospitality is bundled in with tourism. According to a House of Commons report published in May last year, it makes up 7.1% of all UK employment

Gerard Bassett and Robin Hutson in their ‘90s pomp.

Hutson is the real deal, he and Basset started Hotel du Vin on a shoestring. Investors jumped at the chance to fund a collaborative venture; friends and acquaintances such as Anita Roddick and her husband Gordon rightly believed in Robin and his charming Anglophile colleague Bassett. Hutson’s wife did all the interiors herself, cleverly creating now ubiquitous boutique style by mixing old and new furnishings to save cash. The first opened in Winchester in 1994. Ten years later they sold the chain for 66 million pounds.

Hutson has his finger on the pulse of the aspirant middles classes. As wine sales across the world shrink, the trend for eating local, less but better and farm-to-table produce may be key to The Pigs success. All of the Pigs prioritise local suppliers, have kitchen gardens and serve local wines. Hutson gets the need for pride in England’s produce and the country it represents. Most of all he understand the need to nurture hospitality staff, to professionalise a field much maligned by government.

It’s been a long time since an endorsement of this magnitude has excited TW. It was felt when Fenwick’s opened in the Victoria Quarter and when John Lewis built its now abandoned department store on the town’s industrial estate. This is about so much more than world class hospitality, it’s about the self-respect of a once beautiful now tawdry tired town. It might just kick start a revolution and do more than lift the populous from gastronomic torpor. It might provide jobs and a sense of self-worth for hospitality professionals keen to be viewed as experts in this much maligned field. They/we would appreciate the chance to serve you for lowly as we all may seem to the unenlightened there is dignity in service. 

Gerard Bassett said it well when he finished his deathbed writings with a thank you: ‘My efforts to serve people, to make them comfortable and give them a night, they would remember for the rest of their lives, repaid me many times over. I would do it all again’. If only the elected of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council felt the same.

Lisse Garnett is a former BBC newsreader, waitress, land agent, wine importer, whisky tour guide, and prison lecturer. There are few jobs she hasn’t tried. To hospitality, history, journalism and the vine she has remained true. Follow her on Twitter here @LorettaWino