About This Tour
A WalkTW Self-Guided Trail — Dunorlan Park, Royal Tunbridge Wells
Distance: 0.6 miles / 1 km circuit
Time: 35 minutes at a relaxed pace
Difficulty: Easy — mostly flat paths, one gentle slope between Stops 4 and 5
Start and end point: Dunorlan Park Café, Pembury Road, TN2 3QN
Parking: Available at the Pembury Road entrance from £1. Free after 6 pm
Park opens: 9 am daily
This tour is different from all the others. You don’t walk between landmarks — you walk inside one. Everything you see in Dunorlan Park was designed by a single landscape architect, for a single man, on a single brief: build something extraordinary. That man spent a decade here, was criticised for it, and left. His house is gone. His park is still here — and this tour tells you exactly what you’re looking at.
Route Map
Stop 1 — The Café & Mansion Terrace
Dunorlan Park Café, Pembury Road TN2 3QN
Collect a coffee from the café if you want one. Then step outside and look south from the terrace.
The stone terrace you are standing on is the only surviving fragment of Dunorlan House — the Victorian mansion that once stood on this hillside and dominated the entire estate. It was built in the Italian style from Normandy stone, completed in 1862, and immediately disliked by its own builder. By 1946, it had caught fire. By 1958, it had been demolished. Eight suburban houses now occupy the footprint.
The terrace survived because it was too solid and too well-made to bother removing. From it, the original owner could survey the entire park laid out below him — the lake, the avenue, the fountain, the temple — designed by one of the foremost landscape architects of the Victorian era to be viewed from precisely where you are standing now.
The view has not changed substantially in 160 years.
🔍 Who built this mansion — and why did his own servant call it an architectural monstrosity?
📖 Read: Nothing Without The Cross — The Man Who Built Dunorlan Park | Dunorlan Park — The Private Paradise That Became Everyone’s
Stop 2 — The Lake
Central Lake, Dunorlan Park
Walk east from the terrace and follow the path down toward the water.
The lake covers six acres and is fed by the River Teise — a tributary of the Medway that rises in the valley the park is set into. The River Teise was dammed twice to create it: first to form a pond, then again to form the lake as it exists today. The cascade you will pass later connects the lake to the ornamental water garden below.
Boating has operated on the lake every year since April 1949, except for the period before 1949, when it was still a private estate. In 1950, King George VI awarded two swans to the park. Their descendants are among the current residents.
During the Second World War, troops were billeted in the mansion directly behind you. What they did to several features of this park in their spare time is the subject of Stop 4.
🔍 Who owned this lake before the public — and how did the Council come to purchase the entire estate?
📖 Read: Dunorlan Park — The Private Paradise That Became Everyone’s
Stop 3 — Victoria Cross Grove
Southwest corner, Dunorlan Park
Follow the path west and downhill to the grove of oak trees in the southwestern corner of the park.
Twenty-one oaks were planted here during the winter of 1994–95 and dedicated on the 50th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1995. They commemorate ten recipients of the Victoria Cross who were connected to the Borough of Tunbridge Wells.
One of them was the very first person to receive the Victoria Cross. Charles Davis Lucas was a mate in the Royal Navy who, in 1854 during the Crimean War, picked up a live shell that had landed on the deck of HMS Hecla and threw it overboard before it exploded. The medal was presented to him personally by Queen Victoria on 26 June 1857. He is buried in Mereworth, Kent.
In 2006, to mark the 400th anniversary of Royal Tunbridge Wells and the 150th anniversary of the Victoria Cross, the then Poet Laureate Andrew Motion was commissioned to write a poem in memory of the ten men. A sculpture incorporating extracts from the poem stands in the grove. It is worth reading.
🔍 What connects the ten men remembered in this grove — and which of their stories is the most unexpected?
📖 Read: Dunorlan Park — The Private Paradise That Became Everyone’s
Stop 4 — The Dolphin Fountain & Cascade
Lower water garden, Dunorlan Park
Follow the path south and downhill from the lake until the cascade comes into view, then continue to the fountain at its base.
The dolphin fountain in front of you was built by the Pulham family — Victorian specialists in ornamental stonework and the inventors of Pulhamite, the artificial stone from which it is largely constructed. It features dolphins, water nymphs, classical figures, and a goddess at the top. The upper section of this fountain was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1862 before it was ever installed here. It arrived in the park as an object that had already been seen by hundreds of thousands of people.
During the Second World War, soldiers billeted in the mansion used the statues lining the avenue above as target practice. Several were badly damaged. The fountain itself survived — though parts required replacement during the major restoration project of the early 2000s, which won a Civic Trust Award for the quality of the work.
Look at the cascade connecting the lake above to the water garden beside the fountain. It has changed very little since it was built in the 1860s.
🔍 What else was the Pulham family famous for — and what was the name of the goddess originally placed at the top of this fountain?
📖 Read: Dunorlan Park — The Private Paradise That Became Everyone’s
Stop 5 —The Grecian Temple
Top of the Cedar Avenue, Dunorlan Park
Walk up the avenue from the fountain toward the temple at the top of the slope. The large trees lining the avenue on either side are deodar cedars — planted by the landscape designer Robert Marnock in the 1860s and still standing. They are among the oldest trees in the park.
The Grecian temple at the top was built from Portland stone and Pulhamite by the Pulham family. It marks the head of the main avenue — the architectural fullstop at the top of the composition Marnock designed to be read from the terrace above the café.
Inside the temple, until the night of 23 October 2006, stood a Victorian bronze statue called The Dancing Girl — sculpted by William Theed, gifted to the park in 1951, and valued at £50,000. Whoever stole it drove up through the Pembury Road entrance, removed the statue from its plinth, and left. The glass window of the temple was found to have been removed the following morning. Vehicle tracks led to the entrance. The statue has never been recovered.
The plinth where she stood is still there. The temple is otherwise intact.
🔍 What did the original evangelical owner of this estate use the avenue for on summer evenings — and how many invitations did he send out?
📖 Read: Nothing Without The Cross
Tour ends here — or continues for as long as you like. The café is a short walk back uphill. Boating on the lake runs Saturdays and Sundays, 10 am–5 pm. The park closes at 5 pm daily.
🏛️ Guided History Walks — Friends of Dunorlan Park
If this tour has left you wanting more, the Friends of Dunorlan Park run their own guided history walks through the park led by Siobhan O’Connell and Peter Russell — the people who know this park’s story better than anyone.
Walks meet at the Café at 2 pm. Membership of the Friends group gets you in for free.
To join or find out more: