Horsmonden

Horsmonden matters because it shows how one Wealden parish surfed three very different economic waves and left physical evidence for each.

1. Iron age (mid‑16th to mid‑17th C). The Weald’s iron‑rich clay, coppiced oak for charcoal and steep streams were the perfect recipe. Browne’s foundry employed ~200 men, huge for a hamlet, and even lured Charles I down in 1638 to watch a gun pour. One of those bronze pieces sits in the Tower of London today. If you walk the permissive path round Furnace Pond you can still spot slag heaps and the earthen dam [2].
2. Wealden cloth (late 1600s‑1700s). Iron cooled, broadlooms warmed up. Huguenot refugees and families like the Austens turned fulling mills on the Teise. Their timber‑framed cloth‑halls, Broadford, Grovehurst, survive; look for long ranges of evenly spaced windows that once dried cloth [3].
3. Hop country (18th C‑20th C). Kent went beer‑mad and Horsmonden cashed in. Tall white oast cowls still stud farmyards. Fuggles, the backbone of many English bitters, was reportedly found here as a chance seedling in 1861 [1].

Why bother visiting?

• Industrial archaeology without crowds. No turnstiles, just footpaths and interpretation boards; perfect for DIY history buffs.
• Layer‑cake landscape. Within one 5 km loop you pass Tudor cloth‑halls, Regency hop gardens and WWII bomb damage.
• Events: annual Horsmonden Summer Festival (late June) and nostalgic Hop‑Picking Weekend (second Sat in September) bring the place to life.

When to go

April‑May: Apple and cherry blossom; clear views from St Margaret’s hill before the oaks leaf out

Mid‑August: Hops heavy on the bine; oasts sometimes firing up for demonstration kilns

Late October: Furnace pond framed by copper beeches; fewer day‑trippers

How to explore (and what people mess up)

Do:

• Park on the village green and grab a map from the café
• Walk anticlockwise round Furnace Pond so information boards appear in logical order
• Check St Margaret’s opening times online (keys held by volunteers)
• Pronounce it Horz‑mun‑den (rhymes with “horizon”)

Don’t:

• Park by the church, single‑track lane, no turning space
• Assume there’s a visitor centre, there isn’t
• Turn up on a Sunday expecting a tourist tour during service
• Say “Horse‑MON‑den” – locals will gently correct you

Get it wrong and…

• Heritage risk: Unmanaged paths round Furnace Pond erode the 16th‑century dam; stick to way‑marked routes.
• Lost Austen link: Broadford is a private home; trespass and the owners (quite reasonably) close what little public access remains.

The Austen Family’s Ancestral Home

Quick take-aways

• Broadford: 15-century cloth-master’s hall, privately owned, once home to John Austen IV, Jane’s great-grandfather [3] [4] [5].
• Grovehurst: slightly older timber house just uphill; earlier Austen generations lived there before they moved their money down the road to Broadford [6] [7].
• St Margaret’s Church: begun c. 1311 under Rector Henry de Grofhurst; bombed by a V1 in 1944, every north- and east-side window blown out, fragments now reset in the chapel [3] [7] [8].
• The churchyard carries the clearest physical link to the novelist: a railed table top tomb and several ledger stones for the Austen clan.

Broadford & Grovehurst: What to look for

• Broadford sits low beside the stream on Furnace Lane (grid ref TQ 713 397). From the public footpath you’ll spot the deep jettied first floor that marks it out as a proper cloth-hall, broad looms need head-height.
• Grovehurst lies a five-minute stroll north (TQ 713 402). It’s private too; peer through the hedge gap for a glimpse of long mullioned windows where spinning and finishing once happened.
• Both buildings speak to the money that poured through the Wealden cloth trade in the 1600s; the Austens weren’t landed gentry yet, they were savvy industrialists.

St Margaret’s: How the stones tell the story

• The walk from the green takes you over two meadows, down to the Teise, then up to the ridge; that distance explains why the later village migrated away from its medieval heart.
• Inside, lift the small carpet by the chancel steps, brass of Henry de Grofhurst, the rector-builder, is under there.
• Check the south aisle for the Austen memorial window, then wander outside to find the iron-railed tomb etched with a capital “A”.
• Pause by the new east window. Rosemary Everett’s 1946 glass replaces the panes the V1 destroyed, local kids collected the shards, some now re-set alongside her work.

Common slip-ups (and how to dodge them)

• Zoom-lens trespass: don’t step onto Broadford’s drive. Stay on the public footpath; you still get a clean shot of the timber frame.
• Church-gate parking: those two slots are reserved for funerals. Safer to leave the car in the Green Lane lay-by, 150 metres west.
• Name mix-up: Grovehurst (the house) versus Goudhurst (the village four miles away). Locals will correct you in about two seconds.
• Skipping the bomb story: without it the modern stained glass looks weirdly out of place; you need that 1944 context to read the building.

Practical bits in one breath

OS Explorer 136 covers every corner; the church aims to stay open 10 am–4 pm Thursdays and Saturdays, ring the warden if you hit a locked door. The Gun & Spitroast back on the green pours a Fuggles-heavy bitter and still does baguettes till two.

That should keep you oriented without any broken table layouts. Fancy digging deeper, family papers, hop history, or maybe you want a mapped walk? Let me know what grabs you next.

Two-minute take-aways

• The green you stand on is called The Heath. It’s the village’s front room and mini high street rolled into one.
• Heath Stores sits on the north side: Community Retailer of the Year (CRA 2015) and still big on Kentish suppliers [9].
• The timber-framed Gun & Spitroast opposite has poured beer and turned meat since the 1500s. Locals still rate the Sunday joints [10].
• Walkers cycle through orchards on the High Weald Landscape Trail [11]; anglers stalk carp on Furnace Pond [12]
• June brings a four-day Summer Festival [13] [14]; the second Sunday in September is the long-running Gypsy Horse Fair [15].
• Primary-age kids feed into Leigh Academy Horsmonden, Ofsted “Good”, IB Primary Years Programme [16] [17] [18].

Daily rhythm on The Heath

I park up, cross the grass and hear two things: dogs yapping and the door chime of Heath Stores. The shop is compact yet stocked wall-to-wall with Kent produce, Biddenden cider, Staplehurst honey, bread from Hawkhurst. Awards matter less than the fact you can post a parcel, pick up a prescription and grab a flat white without leaving one counter [9].

Browse around this site.

Spin around and you face the Gun & Spitroast Inn [19]. Oak beams, open fire, three cask lines (one almost always a Fuggles-heavy bitter). On Fridays the landlord hangs a blackboard listing which joints will hit the spit at six. You smell it before you read it.

Stretch your legs

Public footpaths peel off every side of the green. My go-to loop: south on Furnace Lane, skirt the dam of Furnace Pond [20], then swing east through apple rows back to the B2162, about 5 km, mud-light in summer, pig-wallow after rain. The longer High Weald Landscape Trail (145 km coast-to-coast) cuts a diagonal across the parish if you fancy a bigger day.

Cyclists stick to lanes: Horsmonden–Brenchley–Goudhurst gives 200 m of climbing in 10 km and three coffee stops if you plan it right.

Pockets of history

Furnace Pond feels calm now, kingfishers, bivvied carp anglers, but note the heavy slag lumps in the dam wall; that’s Tudor iron waste. Sprivers, National Trust [21] [22], hides 1 km north-west: Georgian mansion in private hands, but the azalea-ringed woodland garden opens select weekends each spring. Check the NT site before you turn up.

Community calendar

Early June: the Summer Festival [13] [14] pulls in comedy nights, a classic-car line-up, and a Saturday beer tent that empties every cask by dusk. Second Sunday September: the Gypsy Horse Fair [23], four centuries old, briefly banned in 2000, now managed under a traffic order, fills The Heath with coloured cobs, stalls and music. It’s loud, busy and totally different from any farmers’ market.

Day-trip bolt-ons

Sit in Horsmonden for lunch, then reach:

• Scotney Castle: Romantic moated ruin, 4 miles south-west (10 min by car).
• Bedgebury National Pinetum & Forest: Bike hire, 12-mile trail, 8 miles south.
• Bewl Water: 800-acre reservoir, paddle-board hire, 9 miles south-west.

Eating beyond the green

• The Goudhurst Inn: 4 miles east: wood-fired pizza and Balfour Estate wines.
• Wheelwrights Arms: Matfield, 3 miles north-west: 400-year-old weatherboard pub, home-made pies, two cask pumps.

School run snapshot

Leigh Academy Horsmonden sits on Back Lane. Latest Ofsted (2023) keeps the “Good” grade; teachers frame lessons around the IB learner-profile buzzwords—think “inquirers” not “worksheet robots”. Parents I meet like the outdoor space and the after-school forest club [16] [17] [18].

That’s the village as it lives today: a green that still pulls everyone in, footpaths that slide straight into hop country, and events lively enough to block the A262 for a weekend. Anything here you want me to dig into deeper?

Why the “family” bit matters here

Horsmonden grew on the grit of two dynasties: Brownes (iron) and Austens (cloth). Generations stuck around, honed a trade, handed it on. We work the same way. My dad is the managing director of Welham Jones; I am currently the director of business development, and the next branch of the family, who knows. A small team, steady values, no corporate churn.

Straightforward help when a death occurs

The paperwork and phone calls can feel like wading through treacle. We break it down, step by step:

1. First call—24 / 7. One of us, not a night-desk agency, answers and arranges transfer into our care. (Welham Jones Tunbridge Wells)
2. Options, costs, timescales. We show you the package sheet with every figure on it, chapel fees, doctor’s fee, flowers, so you can choose and budget in the same meeting.
3. Planning meeting. Pick music, readings, route; we draft the order of service while you share stories.

Prefer to plan in advance? Our Pre-paid Funeral Plans lock the price and record your wishes so family aren’t second-guessing them later. (Average plan takes under an hour to set up, payable in one go or over 12–60 months.)

After-care that keeps going

• Full mortuary facilities on site, your loved one never leaves our care until the funeral.
• Memorials: from simple lawn stones to bespoke hand-carved panels; local stonemason, six-week turnaround on most designs.
• Items of remembrance: fingerprints in silver pendants, miniature keepsake urns, memory books, whatever helps the family keep close.
• Repatriation: arranging paperwork, flights and embalmment for deaths abroad or returns to home countries.

Finding us from Horsmonden

By car (≈ 8.1 miles / 20 min)

Leave The Heath and head north-west along Brenchley Road. After about half a mile the lane changes name to Horsmonden Road; stay with it until you reach the T-junction at Spout Lane, roughly a one-mile run so far.

Turn left into Spout Lane, then almost immediately swing right onto Fairman’s Lane. It feels like a driveway but it’s public; a few seconds later bend left again into Tibbs Court Lane. Keep straight as the lane merges into Cryals Road and enjoy the open orchards for the next mile and three-quarters. At the far end you meet the A 21.

Turn right onto the dual carriageway and pass straight over the Kippings Cross roundabout to stay on the A 21 towards Tunbridge Wells. After two miles, filter left onto the A 264 slip-road signposted “Tun. Wells / Maidstone”. At the mini-roundabout take the second exit, that’s Pembury Road, and follow it for about a mile and a half into town.

Pembury Road ends at lights opposite Calverley Park Gardens. Turn right, keep to the right-hand lane, and after 300 yards make another right into Calverley Road. A tiny roundabout appears almost at once; first exit puts you on Crescent Road. Welham Jones is 200 feet ahead on the right, number 39. Allow 15–20 minutes in normal traffic, a shade longer during school-run hours.

By bus:

Hams Travel 297 boards outside the Gun & Spitroast. Alight at Calverley Road or the Railway Station; both are a five-minute walk to Crescent Rd. The service runs every two hours, Monday–Saturday [24]

Coming from West Kingsdown? The A20 → A227 → A26 brings you straight to our door in about 35–40 minutes outside rush hour.

Talk to us

Welham Jones Funerals & Memorials
39 Crescent Road, Royal Tunbridge Wells, TN1 2LZ

Phone : 01892 300 330

Hours: Mon–Fri 9 am–5 pm; weekends by appointment

Emergencies: 24/7, 365 days a year

That’s a lot to take in. Would you like a detailed price sheet, or perhaps help booking a first meeting with the team?

References

[1] Horsmonden, via the Visit Tunbridge Wells website, https://visittunbridgewells.com/plan-your-trip/towns-villages/horsmonden/

[2] Horsmonden Cannons, via Horsmonden website http://www.horsmonden.co.uk/history/furnace/cannons/

[3] History of St Margaret’s, Horsmonden, via St Margaret’s Horsmonden website, https://www.stmargaretshorsmonden.org.uk/history.htm

[4] Broadford – Horsmonden Village Kent. https://www.horsmonden.co.uk/places/broadford/

[5] TQ7139 : Broadford: an old “Clothmaster’s Hall”, https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/905847

[6] The Austens of Horsmonden, https://www.horsmonden.co.uk/history/people/jane-austen-connections/

[7] Grovehurst – Horsmonden Village Kent, https://www.horsmonden.co.uk/places/grovehurst/

[8] Unexpected find brings D Day commemorations to life in Horsmonden, https://www.rochester.anglican.org/news/unexpected-find-brings-d-day-commemorations-to-life-in-horsmonden.php

[9] Heath Stores, Horsmonden, Kent, https://www.conveniencestore.co.uk/retailer-profiles/heath-stores-horsmonden-kent/517495.article

[10] Gun & Spitroast Inn, Horsmonden, https://camra.org.uk/pubs/gun-spitroast-inn-horsmonden-128557

[11] High Weald Landscape Trail, https://highweald.org/things-to-do/high-weald-landscape-trail/

[12] Horsmonden in Kent, https://villagenet.co.uk/?v=horsmonden_kent

[13] Horsmonden Summer Festival 2025, https://www.hovec.co.uk/horsmonden-summer-festival-2025

[14] HoVEC Summer Festival 2025 – Save the date!, https://hovec.co.uk/hovec-summer-festival-2025-save-date

[15] Horsmonden Horse Fair, Kent, https://talkingromani.com/11-09-10-horsmonden-horse-fair-kent/

[16] Leigh Academy Horsmonden – Ofsted, https://www.leighacademyhorsmonden.org.uk/about-us/ofsted/

[17] Leigh Academy Horsmonden website, https://www.leighacademyhorsmonden.org.uk/

[18] Leigh Academy Horsmonden (7 Back Ln, Horsmonden, Tonbridge TN12 8NJ), Google Maps, https://maps.app.goo.gl/AHfE21BUCAf52GNbA

[19] Gun & Spitroast Inn (The Heath, Horsmonden, Tonbridge TN12 8HT), Google Maps, https://maps.app.goo.gl/pF68QwMjgvXvK3mq6

[20] Furnace Pond (Tonbridge TN12 8LZ), Google Maps, https://maps.app.goo.gl/R3QZhQ7sqfZsLmH9A

[21] Sprivers, http://www.horsmonden.co.uk/places/sprivers/

[22] Sprivers Mansion Wedding Venue (Lamberhurst Road, Tonbridge TN12 8DR), Google Maps, https://maps.app.goo.gl/1xFQKMNZRFzPbqZr5

[23] Gypsy Horse Fair, http://www.horsmonden.co.uk/gypsy-horse-fair/

[24] Horsmonden to Royal Tunbridge Wells by bus, taxi, car or foot, via the ROme2Rio website, https://www.rome2rio.com/s/Horsmonden/Royal-Tunbridge-Wells