Our history
Tonbridge is an ancient town with a rich history, so it is no surprise that a number of people have been born or have lived here who have played a part in our national life. Eight well known people have in recent years been commemorated in the town by the erection of Blue Plaques. This suggested walk takes in all eight sites and enables you to see where these people lived. This leaflet both gives directions and tells you something about the people themselves. The length of the walk is about 4 miles.
Seven of the plaques have been put up in 2013-14 by Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council, working with the Civic and Historical Societies and the Town Wardens.
Some of Tonbridge’s historic former residents.
Colin Cowdrey - Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge. Colin Cowdrey born in India in 1932 and was a pupil at Tonbridge School in the late 1940s. He lived at Ferox Hall, a school boarding house, while his parents remained in India.
Cowdrey was the finest of many fine cricketers produced by Tonbridge School. A stylish batsman, he was a blue at Oxford and captained both Kent and England. Between 1950 and 1976 he scored 42,719 runs, including 7,624 in test matches.
Cowdrey was the first person to play 100 Tests. Later in life he was President of the MCC and became a peer in 1997. He died in 2000.
The Reverend George Austen. Reverend Austen - father of the novelist Jane Austen - was born in Tonbridge in 1731. The Austens, originally from Horsmonden, settled in Tonbridge in the eighteenth century, where they inter-married with other Tonbridge families, such as the Wellers and Hoopers.
There are monuments to all three families in the parish church, including one to George's own father William. George was a pupil at Tonbridge School in 1741-47 and subsequently second master in 1754-57. He later became rector of Steventon in Hampshire, where Jane was born in 1775. He died in 1805.
Edward Morgan Forster OM CH (EM Forster)
EM Forster was one of the finest English novelists of the 20th century. He was born in London in 1879 but lived at 38 Dry Hill Park Road in the 1890s while a day boy at Tonbridge School.
After Cambridge he wrote a series of memorable novels including Where Angels Fear to Tread, A Room with a View, The Longest Journey, Howards End and A Passage to India. Later in life he wrote mainly essays, collected as Abinger Harvest and Two Cheers for Democracy.
Forster was also co-author of the libretto for Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd. He died in 1970.
Cecil Frank Powell - Nobel Prize winning physicist. Born in Tonbridge in 1903, Cecil Frank Powell was educated at a local primary school before gaining a scholarship to the Judd School. Following this he attended Sidney Sussex Collage, Cambridge, graduating in 1925 in Natural Sciences.
In 1928 he took up a post as research assistant to A.M. Tyndall in the H.H. Wills Physical Laboratory at the University of Bristol and completed his PhD in 1929.
In 1949 Powell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and received the society's Hughes Medal the same year.
In 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method".