To the purists Denny Bottom means just that area of Rusthall by the Toad Rock enclosed by Woodside Road and Harmony, Upper and Apsley Streets, but effectively (and at the risk of sparking a few local arguments) it includes the rest of Woodside Road, Grange Road, Rusthall Park and Rustwick too. Bretland Road is debatable, but please feel free to debate the matter if you'd like to. Until about a hundred years ago, much of it was a sandstone quarry, one of several dotted around Tunbridge Wells to provide stones for the wealthy mansions of the town and also, possibly, St Paul's church on the Common nearby. Click on the map on the right for an enlargement

The southern corner of the area was once known as Little Denny Bottom Meadow and was run as a smallholding.

Denny Bottom was also one of Tunbridge Wells’s laundry areas. The pub was in fact once the main laundry but several other houses nearby shared the load. Washing would be carted up from the town to be scrubbed and hung out on the rocks and gorse bushes of the Common to dry.

For a history of the small businesses that have come and gone, here are a couple of articles by local historian Dennis Penfold, that were first published in the St Paul's News in 2003
DENNY BOTTOM I         DENNY BOTTOM II

One of these is the Toad Rock Retreat, parts of which were said to date back to the 18^th century until it burned down in 1998 and had to be completely rebuilt.

It was originally three cottages knocked into one, but these had been so chopped and changed over the years that basically all that remained of them were some internal walls, the main chimney and the front of the Games room. Apparently the pub also burned down in the 1930s. Certainly it was extensively rebuilt then, so much of the outer structure dated from that fire. Click HERE for an account of the event on someone else's website that will open in a new window that you just close to return here. Half the neighbours who happened to be at home that day were standing just behind the camerawoman, whose great shot appeared on the front page of the local Kent and Sussex Courier. It felt rather like watching an old friend die, but luckily buildings are more easily replaced than people.

The new Toad Rock Retreat is as faithful a recreation of the old building as possible with new materials and building regulations. In fact people revisiting after a few years often assume that the old place has just been smartened up.

Besides the pub, the main draw for visitors is the Toad Rock and its surrounding outcrop, plus the sands and Bull’s Hollow through the woods. These have provided generations of kids with the next best thing to the seaside. All the rocks have different names, some of which date back at least a century, and there are certain jumps or climbs which are rites of passage for the kids.

Occasionally there are accidents but remarkably few, considering. Perhaps this is because the rocks have been so worn by their feet that routes are clearly recognisable. Also the kids seem to keep an eye on each other.

Until the 1980s the attractions of Denny Bottom were curiously unreflected in property values. In the early 50s a whole terrace between the Scout Hut and the shop was demolished because the seven houses were deemed simply not worth repairing. In the 70s there was even talk of knocking down the whole area and starting again, so houses could be picked up for a song (i.e. £800 in one case in Harmony Street). In the early 80s one could still buy a house in Upper Street opening onto the Common for the same as an equivalent building on the far side of the town facing the gasworks. Which was lucky for those of us who moved in then.

Now you have to pay a bit of a premium, but the complications of parking keep prices from spinning completely out of control.