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
Church of King Charles the Martyr, Royal Tunbridge Wells Charles I, who was executed in 1649 and whose son Charles II had been restored in 1660. While it was a chapel of ease, it served the parishes of Frant, Speldhurst and Tonbridge. When it was built, the church was the first substantial building constructed in Tunbridge Wells. The church had no resident vicar until 1709, and relied on visiting clergymen to conduct services. As Tunbridge Wells expanded, so did the church. After new parishes were created for the expanding town, the position of the chapel became an anomaly and it eventually became itself a parish church in 1889, but