Feeling Festive?

With Christmas fast approaching, we hope the designs of the two Christmas cards the Society is producing and selling as a fundraiser this year will put you in the festive spirit!. Both designs feature Southborough scenes and you may also be pleased to hear that the cards have been printed in High Brooms, by our excellent printers at BDP Media. All very appropriately local!

Come and see us at our stall at the Winter Fayre on Saturday, 9th December, 1pm - 6pm, to make a purchase. We will be selling the cards in pack of ten for £8.95 or individually for £2.00 each. However, there will be limited numbers. If you would like to guarantee your cards, you can pre-order (packs only) using the form on the link here.

Orders must be received by Sunday, 26th November.

We expect the cards to be ready for collection from about the 1st December (we will email you to let you know to confirm this as soon as they are ready) and they can be collected from The House Company, 35 London Road, Southborough. 

‘Christmas Greetings’, 1936.

‘Christmas Greetings’, a reproduction of a card kept in the Society archive.

A beautiful, stylised card that was likely to have been originally created from a lino or woodcut design, based on a snowy St Peter’s scene. It was originally sent by Major Eric Ruffell and his wife in 1936, living at 15 Chestnut Avenue at the time. Their house was called “Conkers”, which must have raised a smile in passers-by.

The message in Ruffell’s card reads, Christmas, 1936. The joy of Christmas is increased by the remembrance of our friends. May happiness and good fortune be with you. From Major & Mrs. Eric Ruffell.  “Conkers,” 15, Chestnut Avenue, Southborough.

Inscription inside the card.

Eric Ruffell was born in 1897, to a family which ran a jeweller’s shop in Tunbridge Wells High Street. He attended Skinners’ School and it is thanks to a website, in memory of ex- Skinners’ boys who fought in the World Wars, that we know a little about him. Ruffell joined the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1915, as a Second Lieutenant. He was just 18 on joining. He was part of a tide of young men who went to war immediately after leaving their grammar schools or their public schools. Unlike so many, he survived and lived until 1966. By 1917, Eric Ruffell had been awarded the Military Cross and by November of that year he had been made a Major, aged 20. You can find out more about Ruffell on the Imperial War Museum website here.

In later life, when settled in Southborough, Major Ruffell became involved in community life. He acted as Chair of the Urban District Council and also became President of the Southborough Trade and Improvement Association.

‘Hilly Fields Under Snow’ (1967)

by Ralph Usherwood (reproduced with kind permission of the Usherwood family)

A view painted repeatedly by Usherwood in his many years spent living in Southborough.

This wintry scene, showing the spell-binding power of snow to transform the landscape, was executed in gouache, watercolour and ink. Usherwood’s preferred medium was watercolour and ink; he painted from life in all weathers and all seasons.

Usherwood working in the snow.

Ralph Dean Usherwood was born at West Wickham, Kent, in 1911, the son of a schoolmaster. He showed artistic promise at a young age. His joy in painting became a lifelong passion and had a profound influence on his career. After university he was employed as a typographer at The Cloister Press, Manchester, but he really found his feet at the BBC. He was Art Editor of the Radio Times from 1951 to 1960.

Ralph and his wife Hilda brought up their family in Southborough. He was an active member of St. Thomas’ Church and involved in the local community. Ralph died on January 2nd, 2000, just two days into the new millennium. His artwork lives on, strongly communicating the joy he found in painting. He is commemorated by a Southborough Society plaque at his former Pennington Road home.

(For more about this exceptional local artist see the Southborough Society Newsletter, February 2022).

We hope you have enjoyed finding out more about our two Christmas card designs this year. By purchasing our cards you will be supporting a local charity and a local business. If you are interested in the work we do at the Society, please consider joining us!

Membership is from just £12 per year or £15 for a family and you will receive high quality quarterly newsletters packed full of local history, nature notes, events and much more. If you would like to join, just fill in the form here and we will get back to you!

Heritage Open Day Cyanotype Workshop

We had so much fun last weekend running our family cyanotype workshop in collaboration with Southborough Library for Heritage Open Day weekend! We could not have asked for more prefect weather to expose our prints.

The cyanotype process was used by botanist Anna Atkins in the mid 19th century to document different plant specimens such as ferns and algae and as such, secured her place in history as the first female photographer and first person to create a photobook. Atkins grew up in Tonbridge at Ferox Hall with her scientist father, John George Children, at a time when Southborough was still part of the domain of Tonbridge Castle. Some of you may have noticed the blue plaque that commemorates the two on the outside of the building.

The process involves coating paper with a solution of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide to sensitise it to light. Then depending on the lighting conditions you can expose a print within 5-7 minutes (just as we did yesterday) and then simply rinse in water to develop and fix the print to reveal its beautiful blue appearance. This is where the term 'blueprint' originates from.

Our participants had lots of materials to choose from; flowers, foliage, feathers, beads, letters, lace and even a few negatives of archive postcards and photographs of Southborough to design their creations. It was the perfect activity to tie in with the Heritage Open Day's 2023 theme of 'Creativity Unwrapped', and amazing to think we were using the same process in the same Kent sunshine that Anna Atkins did over 150 years ago!

Thank you to everyone who attended the workshop and for making such wonderful prints. It was inspiring to hear so many of you to continued exploring the process in your own time. Here are some images of our photographers in action and just a snapshot of all the cyanotypes made over the course of the two sessions.

* If you like what we do, want to get involved in future events or wish to support us, please consider joining the Southborough Society. The Society is a registered charity and is run by volunteers. Membership is from just £12 a year and you will receive high quality quarterly newsletters, access to events and be supporting the work we do with archiving and researching our town's rich heritage amongst many other things. 

Picturing High Streets

In September 2022, Historic England launched a nationwide initiative encouraging residents to photograph their local high streets. Our retail environments are experiencing a transformative time as the nature of our shopping habits has changed considerably with the growth of out-of-town shopping centres and the rise of online shopping. It is often these, what appear to be. unremarkable environs that go unrecorded and overlooked; taken for granted until they disappear.

At the Southborough Society, we’d like to think we were ahead of the curve with our recent High Street project in collaboration with Southborough C of E Primary School. Testament to our interest in Southborough’s high street and the skill of our young artists, our calendar sold out and we were pleased to have raised almost five hundred pounds for the school.

Building on the theme of the high street, we would like to encourage you to participate in this national initiative to document, record and share images of our local shops and retailers. The project is a collaboration led by Photoworks with Historic England.

Here is some information from their website:

Starting from September 2022, we are inviting the public to submit their photos of the high street on Instagram so that we can document and celebrate the high street of today.

Over the next 12 months, we will post a new challenge every fortnight on a different high street theme: from celebrating local high street heroes that make our places so special, to capturing favourite hang outs and meeting places, to recording the hidden heritage of our high streets. Here’s how to take part:

1.     Follow @PicturingHighStreets on Instagram and look out for the fortnightly challenges

2.     Submit your photographs by posting them on Instagram using the hashtag #PicturingHighStreets and tagging @PicturingHighStreets (please note we will only be able to see your image if your profile is set to public)

3.     Read the guidance here to check if you are following the requirements

To complete the challenges – fronted by photographers, celebrities and community leaders – you will need to visit your local high streets and discover the secret stories of these places of commerce, conversation and community.

The most evocative photographs will be featured on the Picturing High Streets Instagram channel. A selection of photographs submitted before 21 December 2022 will be displayed in a national outdoor exhibition opening in March 2023 filling advertising space, outdoor exhibition panels and shop windows on high streets across England. These photographs will also enter the Historic England Archive, the nation’s archive for England’s historic buildings, archaeology and social history.

Please make sure you have read the guidance on submission and consent on the website.

This fortnight’s challenge is ‘Hidden Histories’, ‘ghost’ writing reveals former fish shop on Stewart Road, High Brooms.

The Southborough Society runs an annual photographic competition and any images you capture of the high street we would love for you to enter! We have an adult and child category, with £50 for first prize and £30 for runner up. Please email your images to southsocphotocomp@gmail.com

Stay up to date with the fortnightly challenges by following @PicturingHighStreets which gives tips and examples on how to approach each challenge. If you don’t already, please follow us @southboroughsociety where will will repost each challenge too, tag your local photos with #sshighstreet to share your work!

Southborough's Own Gasworks

The material in this article was first published in Southborough Spotlight in an article written in March 1973 by that fine local historian, Doug Bennett. It was prompted then by a dispute in the gas industry. Now, in 2022, energy supplies and rising prices are in the news once more. We are reprinting an abridged version of the original article.

A lamplighter.

Southborough had its own gas works by 1858, sited at the end of Speldhurst Road and clearly marked on the OS map of that year. Gas was expensive in those days and was only used for domestic lighting for those who could afford it.

Site of the former gasworks on Speldhurst Road.

In 1871, a proposal was made in a Council meeting, that the Gas Company should be asked to tender for lighting Southborough’s highways. In spite of some concerns about the financial viability of the Company the tender was accepted. The Gas Company agreed to erect 38 lamps and columns, to light and extinguish these lamps and to keep them properly lit from an hour after sunset until 10.30 each night, except for the five nights nearest each new moon. Obviously, it was assumed people would be safely tucked in bed after 10.30! Additionally, the lamps would not be lit between May 15th and August 15th. The annual cost of each lamp was £2. 14. 0.

The “opening ceremony” on August 16th 1871, in celebration of the coming of the lights, featured a torchlight procession and was attended by an estimated crowd of 4,000. No doubt it was an exciting public spectacle.

Rare, undated photograph of the gasworks, circa late 19th century.

Rare, undated photograph of the gasworks, circa late 19th century.

It seems as if the gas street lights weren’t an unqualified success. By 1877, the Council Lighting Committee was experimenting with paraffin oil lamps, which it was thought might prove superior to the gas lamps. Six were ordered for use near St. Peter’s Church. The number of street lights in the town increased gradually, two more being added in 1878. In 1880 Vulcan (Vale), Meadow, Bedford and Forge Roads were all illuminated. Six more lights were added elsewhere in 1883. By 1890 lamplighters were paid 8/6d per week for their services in lighting and then quenching the street lamps.

Rare, undated photograph of the gasworks, circa late 19th century.

Electric lighting was close on the horizon and two companies providing that service endeavoured to impress the Lighting Committee, with no initial success. High Brooms continued to depend on oil lamps for several more years, as the Southborough Gas Works could not provide supplies. Eventually, High Brooms had to turn to the Tunbridge Wells Gas Company for their gas lights.

In the 1890s, gas heating and cooking appliances were sold by the Council and evening classes were held, in order to show how to cook by gas. Range cookery was so very different that there would be a good deal to learn. By 1897 it became necessary to buy gas in bulk from Tunbridge Wells until 1921, when the Southborough Gas Company ceased to exist, having been bought outright by the Tunbridge Wells Company.

If anyone is able to tell us when the gasworks was demolished or any other related information or photographs, please do get in touch thesouthboroughsociety@gmail.com