The chalybeate (iron-rich) spring at the top of the Pantiles is the founding event of Tunbridge Wells. Discovered by Lord North in 1606, by the mid-seventeenth century it was drawing royalty: Charles II's queen Henrietta Maria came in 1630, Queen Anne in 1697, Princess Victoria in the 1830s.
You can still taste the water. A dipper attends the spring during the summer months (usually Easter to September) and dispenses a glass for a small donation. The water has a distinctly metallic, slightly bitter taste — physicians from the 1600s onward claimed it cured everything from sterility to gout to "melancholy distempers." It probably does no harm, and the experience of standing where Stuart-era courtiers and Victorian invalids stood, drinking the same water, is the best free history lesson in Kent.