Royal Tunbridge Wells small districts, "named after the hills on which they stand, Mount Ephraim, Mount Pleasant and Mount Sion; the other is called the Wells..." The 1680s saw a building boom in the town: carefully planned shops were built beside the long Pantiles promenade (then known as the Walks), and the Mount Sion road, on which lodging house keepers were to build, was laid out in small plots. Tradesmen in the town dealt in the luxury goods demanded by their patrons, which would certainly have included Tunbridge ware, a kind of decoratively inlaid woodwork. "They have made the wells very commodious by
Royal Tunbridge Wells "Spitting Image", when Britain enters a revolution, Royal Tunbridge Wells declares independence under the slogan of 'liberty, equality, gardening'. In the TV sketch comedy series Rutland Weekend Television, there is a musical sketch that tells the tale of three US Navy sailors who plan to spend an exciting—"More exciting than a book of Norman Mailer's"—and glamour-filled 24 hours in Royal Tunbridge Wells. In the UK, the town has a reputation for being a bastion of the middle class and a typical example of "Middle England". This is reflected in the locution "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells", first used by a fictional