Tonbridge Half Marathon Sunday: Brook Street Shut 7am-1pm

The Run Kent Tonbridge Half Marathon, 10k and 5k is on Sunday 4 October 2026. All three races start and finish at The Judd School, Brook Street, Tonbridge TN9 2PN, and all three are on closed roads.

Updated 3 October: RunThrough has published race-day logistics. Race packs from 7.30am, no parking at the school, and a three-hour cut-off. Details under Parking and getting there.

If you are not running, the part that matters is the closures. Brook Street shuts from early morning, and a chain of lanes and village roads west and south of Tonbridge goes with it.

Start times

RunThrough gives the overall event window as 9am to 12 noon.

Entry prices

Entry is through RunThrough’s own event page. A discounted event t-shirt can be added at checkout; it is no longer bundled into the entry fee.

The road closures

The organiser publishes a timed closure list. These are the roads and hours it gives:

Two caveats, and they are the organiser’s, not ours. The closures page carries no year, and the site’s own record shows it has not been edited since August 2023. It also spells the same lane two ways, as “Hayesden Lane” on one line and “Upper Haysden Lane” on the next. Kent County Council had not advertised a temporary traffic order for the race as at 5 September 2026. It has now; see the update below.

Update, 11 September 2026: the council’s order is out. Kent County Council’s notice dated 11 September proposes closing the race roads from 08:30 to 12:30 on 4 October, with rolling closures as the runners pass. Its list is longer than the organiser’s. It adds:

• Molescroft Way, Tonbridge, its whole length, with access kept when it is safe
• Lower Green, Leigh, its whole length
• B2027 Stocks Green Road, from Hildenborough Road to Rings Hill
• B2027 Tonbridge Road, Leigh, its whole length

It lists Brook Street from West Kent College to Upper Haysden Lane. It names the Leigh lanes as Compasses Hill and Coppings Road, where the organiser has Compasses Road and Copping’s Road. The signed diversions run either via the A26 and Bidborough Ridge, or through the town centre, the B245 and the Weald Interchange. The notice says the council “intends to make” the order, so it is proposed rather than made.

Read as a route, though, the list is consistent and useful: it puts the course out through Haysden, along Ensfield Road to Leigh, and back through Hildenborough and Lower Street. Villages on that loop should plan for a closed morning either way.

A warning about the official website

runkent.com is built on a template RunThrough uses for several of its events, and it has not been fully cleaned out. Three pages on it are about somewhere else entirely:

• There are two closures pages. The one linked from the menu is Tonbridge. A second, unlinked page lists Mannings Lane, Picton Gorse Lane and Fox Covert Lane, which are roads near Chester.
• The Frequently Asked Questions page and the course map page both describe laps of Cheltenham Racecourse.
• The event guide page is addressed to runners at an event on “Saturday 1st October”.

None of that applies here. For anything about race day, use RunThrough’s own 2026 event page rather than the pages further down the runkent.com menu.

Who runs it, and where the money goes

The race began in 2011 as the Tonbridge Half Marathon, organised jointly by Tonbridge Rotary Club and Tonbridge Lions Club, with Dame Kelly Holmes as the guest starter. It grew, and the two clubs handed the operational side to RunThrough, a professional event company. The clubs still supply the marshals and run the baggage drop, and the 8th Tonbridge (Hildenborough) Scouts staff the water stations.

Finances sit with the Tonbridge Half Marathon CIO, a registered charity with trustees from both clubs. Profits are split equally between the Rotary and Lions clubs, which pass them on to local causes. More than 1,700 runners took part in 2025, and the Rotary Club estimates that runners raise a further £50,000 or so each year for their own charities.

The 2026 charity of the year is Demelza, the children’s hospice.

Parking and getting there

RunThrough’s event page now carries the race-day arrangements, checked on 3 October 2026:

• There is no parking at the school. RunThrough says local parking will fill up quickly and suggests planning ahead. Brook Street is shut from 7am in any case.
• Tonbridge station is about half a mile from the event village, which RunThrough puts at a 10-minute walk.
• Race pack collection: half marathon 7.30am to 8.30am, 10k 8am to 9am, 5k 8.15am to 9.15am.
• Cut-off: three hours, because of the road closures. Anyone expecting to take longer is asked to email RunThrough before the day.
• Spectators can watch the start and finish on Brook Street, inside the barriers, because one side of the road stays live.

The town centre car parks are a 10 to 15 minute walk from the school. Every chargeable council car park in Tonbridge charges 8am to 8pm, seven days a week, at £1.60 for an hour, £3.00 for two, £4.10 for three and £6.20 for six. Ticket machines take coins only; card payment is through RingGo.

Full tariffs are in our Tonbridge parking guide, and the roadworks and travel page covers anything else shut that weekend.

Still to be confirmed

• Whether Kent County Council made its order in the form advertised on 11 September, which differs from the organiser’s list. If in doubt on the morning, allow for both.

Sources

The date, start times, distances, prices, venue, charity partner and event window are from RunThrough’s own Run Kent Tonbridge Half Marathon, 10k and 5k event page, read on 5 September 2026; the race pack times, parking, cut-off and spectator notes are from the same page, read on 3 October 2026. The closure list is from runkent.com’s road closure page; its last edit date, and the Chester and Cheltenham content on the other pages, come from the same site’s open page index. The history, the club roles, the CIO, the 1,700 runners and the £50,000 figure are from the Rotary Club of Tonbridge’s half marathon page, and the 4 October date is also carried as a save-the-date on the club’s home page. Car park tariffs and charging hours are from Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council’s car park directory.