The Purchase in the Fifteenth Year
Home Grown Hotels has bought The Tunbridge Wells Hotel on The Pantiles. The operator runs The PIG. Chief Executive Kevin Styles states that securing the new home in Tunbridge Wells is a significant moment for the brand, and that the purchase coincides with its fifteenth anniversary.
The group was founded in 2011 by Robin Hutson and is majority-owned by KSL Capital Partners, which took its stake in 2022. It runs nine hotels and a pub across southern England.
The Vendor’s Exit After Thirteen Years
Fleurets brought the hotel to market in November 2025 as a virtual freehold with a guide price of GBP 2.695 million. The agency listing and press reports carry the guide at GBP 2.7 million. The transaction price was not disclosed.
Fleurets’ Simon Bland acted for the vendor. The seller was Julian Leefe-Griffiths, who had operated the property for 13 years and was retiring.
The Asset as It Trades
The hotel carries 20 en-suite bedrooms including a large honeymoon suite, a bar and restaurant with capacity for about 80, a function room seating 50, and an external terrace of about 90 covers subject to a pavement licence. It sits directly opposite the bandstand on The Pantiles.
Those figures describe the property under its current operation. The PIG has published no revised bedroom count for its own scheme.
No Conversion Detail Published
The group states that further detail will follow as plans develop. No room count, no opening date, no restaurant format and no investment figure has been published for the Tunbridge Wells scheme.
The purchase follows the group’s exit from Groombridge Place, the Grade I-listed estate outside the town, in May 2026. The group accepted a private offer for the estate after planning delays and said at the time that the sale would free it to look for new sites around the United Kingdom.
The PIG on the Farm, on the Walton Estate in Warwickshire, is due to open in autumn 2027 after restoration of the Grade II* listed manor house and farm buildings.
The Ground Under the Hotel
The freehold of The Pantiles itself is separately on the market. BNP Paribas Real Estate and Strutt & Parker, alongside the current owner Targetfollow, are offering the Georgian colonnaded arcade with Tunbridge Wells and Rusthall Commons and the ancient Lord of the Manor of Rusthall title.
The agency announcement of 6 August 2026 states that the sale covers more than 250 acres and that the estate has come to market for the second time in 250 years. Targetfollow bought the estate in 2008, per the same announcement.
The hotel sits on an estate that is itself for sale. No document published by either party links the hotel purchase to the estate offering.