There are plenty of places around Martins Farm that can be visited whenever the mood takes you.
Heritage Open Days is rather more interesting.
For ten days in September, doors open that are normally shut, working buildings briefly become visitor attractions, private archives emerge from cupboards and local history is handed over by the people who actually look after it.
England’s Heritage Open Days festival runs from 11 to 20 September 2026. Events are free, although quite a few of the best small tours need to be booked in advance. This year’s national theme is Everyday Histories, concentrating on ordinary work, routines, crafts and the people whose lives rarely acquired a portrait in a grand hall.
That seems particularly well suited to this part of the country.
The High Weald makes more sense when you stop looking only at castles and start noticing estate offices, farm buildings, old lanes, hop gardens, schools and the people who kept all of them going.
We have gone through the Tunbridge Wells programme and picked the three we would choose from Martins Farm.
Not necessarily the biggest.
Just the ones we most want to see.
1. Eridge Park Estate Archive
This is the one we would book first.
For three days, the working estate office at Eridge Park is opening a small selection of material normally kept within the estate.
The display is due to include papers belonging to John Robinson from 1770 to 1782, pieces from the Abergavenny family plate, a sixteenth-century illuminated psalter and a Thomas Tompion longcase clock dating from around 1705.
That is an unusually eclectic deskful of history.
Political papers from the reign of George III sit beside silver, devotional manuscript and clockmaking. More interestingly for anyone trying to understand this landscape, the office also keeps some local social-history material and can point researchers towards the larger Nevill family collections held in county record offices.
The estate office itself is a working office rather than a museum, which is precisely the attraction.
You are not entering a building permanently arranged for visitors. You are being allowed into part of the machinery of an estate that is still functioning.
Visits run on Monday 14, Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16 September, from 10am to 3pm.
The listing gives pre-booking as preferred, and each one-hour session is limited to four people.
Four.
This is not one to leave until breakfast.
2. Hopping and farming at Capel
If you are staying in an oast house, it seems unreasonable to come to this corner of Kent and Sussex without eventually encountering hops.
At St Thomas à Becket Church in Capel, Heritage Open Days is putting together an exhibition of hop-picking and farming photographs and implements on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September, from 10am to 4pm.
The church itself is Grade I listed and contains medieval wall paintings.
The combination is what makes this one appealing.
The history of hop growing is often presented through picturesque oast houses after their agricultural purpose has disappeared. Seeing the photographs, tools and records places the buildings back inside the working landscape that created them.
Our own Oast still has its kiln and cowl, although the hops have long since gone.
A visit to Capel is therefore less about ticking off another historic building and more about understanding why buildings like ours existed in the first place.
The Heritage Open Days programme does not require advance booking for this event, which makes it a useful counterweight to the tiny Eridge archive sessions.
Go when the weather looks kind.
Stay longer than intended.
That is generally the correct operating procedure around here.
3. Something in the water at the Pantiles
The third choice takes you in the opposite direction.
Instead of an estate or a farming village, it explains why Royal Tunbridge Wells exists at all.
The Pantiles: Something in the Water! is a guided walk built around the mineral spring discovered in 1606, the event that transformed a wooded valley into a fashionable spa resort. The organisers trace the development of the Pantiles from medicinal waters to lodging houses, promenading, shopping, gossip and the elaborate social performance that eventually became Royal Tunbridge Wells.
The tours are scheduled for 14, 18, 19 and 20 September, with several morning sessions and an additional Sunday afternoon tour.
They are limited to 14 people and require advance booking.
We like this one because it makes a useful companion to the countryside.
Spend one day looking at an estate archive or old hop-growing community and another looking at the spa town three miles north of us, and the peculiar geography of this corner starts to make sense.
Frant grew along its sandstone ridge.
Tunbridge Wells grew because somebody noticed iron-rich water coming out of the ground.
Neither was designed to become the other.
They simply ended up neighbours.
If those are full
There are plenty of respectable alternatives.
The Elevated Decimus Burton Walking Tour explores the Calverley Estate and the planned expansion of Tunbridge Wells in the 1820s and 1830s. Tours are scheduled for 12, 16 and 19 September, with a maximum of 20 people and advance booking required.
At Salomons Estate, a special talk and tour on Sunday 13 September includes the chance to see parts of the house not normally open to visitors, subject to other events in the building. That session is limited to 18 and also requires booking.
And at Court Lodge in Lamberhurst, guided visits on 12, 13, 19 and 20 September combine a local-history exhibition with the historic Pulham and walled gardens. Those sessions are limited to 15 people and must also be booked in advance.
It is an unusually good fortnight for being nosy.
Heritage, after all, is considerably more entertaining when somebody temporarily gives you a key.
How we would do it
If we were choosing one weekend, we would take 12–13 September.
Start with Capel and the hop-growing history on Saturday, then add one of the Tunbridge Wells walks or the Salomons talk depending on availability.
If you can travel midweek, however, book Eridge Park on 14, 15 or 16 September.
That is the rare one.
And if your visit falls on the second weekend, use Tunbridge Wells itself as the anchor and book one of the Pantiles or Decimus Burton walks.
Do not try to collect Heritage Open Days.
One or two good things, lunch somewhere appropriate and enough unallocated time to find something the programme did not mention will produce a better day.
We have learned that lesson before.
Usually after constructing the itinerary.
Dates and booking checked 28 August 2026.
Heritage is considerably more entertaining when somebody temporarily gives you a key.