The owners of the snooker centre in Tunbridge Wells have spoken for the first time about how they were “devastated” to find the Borough Council wanted to knock down their home, the Friendly Societies’ Hall.

Construction of the ornate Friendly Societies’ Hall (pictured below) began in 1877 after a royal visit by one of Queen Victoria’s daughters, who laid the foundation stone.

A person-to-person meeting finally took place in August between the snooker club and the council which wants to demolish the hall to make way for a three screen “boutique cinema” funded by £68 million of borrowing.

Co-owner of the Victoria Snooker Centre, Graham Martin, (pictured below) told Southborough News: “If it’s knocked down, there’s a lot of community being taken away. What they’re gonna do. I don’t know. I really don’t know, because we are a bit of a meeting place.”

Graham Martin continued: “We do serve the underprivileged…and community groups…it’s just devastating, and it hurts me to the bottom of my stomach, to be fair.”

Graham says the snooker hall has had celebrity visits from all the biggest names in snooker from Jimmy White and Steve Davis to John Higgins and Ronnie O’Sullivan.

You can watch a 5 minute video report from the snooker club by clicking here:
https://youtube.com/shorts/WXFbpdU6d3s

The Tunbridge Wells Civic Society has applied to the government for the Friendly Societies’ Hall to be listed to prevent demolition. A decision is expected in September.

The Civic Society has also suggested an alternative scheme that would allow the council to continue with its plans for a 3-screen boutique cinema (pictured below) but without demolishing the snooker hall.

The meeting with the council in August was said by the snooker club owners to be “productive”.

But the council is still adamant it wants to knock down the Victorian hall, leaving only a refurbished facade on Camden Road, including the elephants on the doorway. (see below)

Graham’s son, Liam is another co-owner of the Victoria Snooker Centre. Liam’s family used to live in a flat which is part of the building. The flat is no longer usable because of a leaking roof.

Liam Martin (pictured below) said: “I’ve been here for 16 years, so half of my life, I’ve raised my children here. So to have the thought of losing the building itself, let alone the business that we’ve built and is thriving, the only word we could use is devastating.”

Liam is also critical of the financial thinking behind the entire council scheme. The council’s debt would add another £5 million a year to the council costs, which is a big rise on the £20 million a year the council spends at the moment on all its services.

The £68 million debt is designed to fund the demolition of a large area on the corner of Camden Road, cinema construction and other refurbishment of the council-owned shopping centre.

The debt means the council needs to extract an EXTRA £5 million a year in car park fees, rents and business rates to cover the debt servicing costs of the loan.

Liam Martin says he doesn’t think it is a viable scheme: “I think it’s a massive risk to spend 68 million pounds of us taxpayers’ money. I really don’t see the logic in putting in this massive cinema and increasing the leisure industry and dining, fine dining, because I don’t think it will attract many more people.”

Scott (pictured below) is a member of the snooker club, the Victoria Snooker Centre.

Scott has been perfecting his shots at the hall for 15 years. He says: “It gets me away from reality. I’ll forget everything, and all I can look at is just a ball, and that’s all I need.”

Scott continues: “It’s like, gives me peace and it gives me comfort, somewhere to escape from real life problems. It’s like a family. A lot of the same people that have been coming 20 years, even before I was here. They’re still coming now. So that’s how I like it.”

Support worker Ray (pictured below), brings a group of adults to the club every Tuesday from the Crossways Community at the Moxham House residential home.

Ray says: “The support…it’s been immense here. Without having something like this to come to, there’s nothing local. We’d almost have to quit. We can’t go to Maidstone. We can’t go to miles away.”

Ray continues: “So having the facilities here, and having, like, somewhere here that actually makes us feel welcome, which is the number one key, somewhere where people can come, and actually feel safe, and the response here is just fantastic.”

Ray says the residents he supports have a “great time” at the Friendly Societies’ Hall (pictured below from Camden Road) and he concludes: “I just think it would be a crying shame, if anything ever happened here.”

You can watch a 30 minute video report from the snooker club here, including parts of my earlier interviews with Justine Rutland, who’s the Liberal Democrat councillor behind the scheme plus the views of the local MP, Liberal Democrat Mike Martin.

You can read a transcript of the 30 minute video here:

For more on the history of the Friendly Societies’ Hall, click on this story:
https://southborough-news.com/2026/03/19/heritage-group-tries-to-save-historic-snooker-hall/

The case for the demolition and the rest of the development scheme is explained at length by Cllr Justine Rutland (pictured below) in this story:
https://southborough-news.com/2026/04/04/lib-dems-push-for-big-council-debt-to-boost-shopping-centre/

Justine Rutland argues that the scheme will boost council business rates receipts in the town, car park revenues and shopping centre rents so the scheme “pays for itself.”

Justine Rutland says that the town needs a new town centre cinema: “One of the ideas is to ensure that young people can be independent..They can also turn up at the cinema in the way that I might have done when I was young and I went to the cinema in the corner and thought, oh, what’s on? And be able to go and do things spontaneously, which you can’t always do at other venues.”

Justine Rutland makes the case despite fears that a new cinema will eat into revenue from the Trinity Theatre’s film offerings and so potentially puts Trinity’s viability at risk.

Other councillors opposing the scale of the council borrowing make their views known in this story from April 2026:
https://southborough-news.com/2026/04/10/opposition-builds-to-lib-dem-plan-for-68-million-council-debt/

More information about the council scheme published by the council’s consultants is at:
https://rvpfuture.com/

The petition to save the snooker hall now has more than 6,000 signatures and is at:
https://c.org/wDcWGyb9Hv