What's in a name?

WANTED: YOUR IDEAS FOR THE NAMING OF THE SOUTHBOROUGH HUB

The Southborough Society are seeking your help in coming up with a name for the newly built Southborough Hub, and rooms within the building, that we can put forward to Southborough Town Council (STC) who will then make the final decision.

Southborough and High Brooms has a great deal of history, so there is a wide choice of possible names to link the new building to people associated or who have contributed to our town.

We are therefore seeking names for the following:

The whole building/complex, and within the building:

Community Hall/Theatre
Community Room 1
Community Room 2
Community Room 3

Please comment below or email your suggestions to ian.kinghorn@btinternet.com

To help you we have posted some archive images to give you some ideas. To begin with, here are some map details showing the area where the Hub is.

Detail from the ‘Southborough Sewerage Utilisation’ map, exact date unknown, pre 1910. The former Southborough Town Council Offices was ‘Merton Lodge’. Note that much of West Ward was yet to be developed and there are some familiar roads have different names.

A detail taken from ‘Tunbridge Wells Town Planning Zoning Proposals circa 1910. Many more roads have been developed in West Ward.

Below is a range of archive images ranging from the late 19th Century up until the early-mid 20th Century of the site surrounds.

You can see here the buildings that neighboured the Royal Victoria Hall, now Hythe Close.

The Temperance Hotel sat opposite where the Hub is now, on the corner of Western Road and London Road.

The Bell Inn was in operation from the late 1850’s and was demolished in 2000. Extract from the Courier newspaper. Next door to the Inn is the Bat and Ball.

The Temperance Hotel is centre and the Bell Inn on the far right.

The Southborough Society unveiled the first of our green plaques in 2012 which feature notable people in our Town - Margaret Bondfield, Guy Maunsell, Ralph Usherwood, just to name a few. You might like to dip in to some of these concise articles to find out more about them by clicking on the link below.

Amelia Scott

Margaret Bondfield

Henry Crundwell

Lord Dowding

Captain Arthur Duckworth

Arthur Fagg

Christopher Fry

Sir Richard Haywood

Kenneth L. Hutchings

Sir John Killick

Doris Leslie

Guy Maunsell

Sergeant Albert Mitchell

Ralph Usherwood

Alex ‘Jock’ Ross

Earnest Arthur Rowe

Katherine Tynan

Roger Webster

Frank Wooley

Secrets of Southborough Common

Yesterday was the opening of the ‘Secrets of Southborough Common’ exhibition; an exciting showcase of the work funded by the National Heritage Lottery and undertaken by Kent High Weald Partnership, Southborough and High Brooms Archaeological Society and the Southborough Society.

The ongoing work of the Kent High Weald Partnership on the Common has made a huge impact on both the environmental sustainability of the site and for the enjoyment of visitors to our ‘cherished green space’. As part of their work Ian Johnstone and his team have been able to produce detailed mapping of the Common and have published three Southborough Common Circular Walk maps. Along with major clearing and path resurfacing tasks they have also led wildlife, bat and fungi walks and facilitated a Forest School for youngsters to engage with the local environment.

SHAAS has been working on excavating the former ‘Brokes Mill’ site near Powdermill Lane and have unearthed some revealing finds which were on display. They have encouraged children to get involved by hosting some well-supported Archaeology taster days and welcoming visitors as part of the recent Heritage Open Days weekends.

The Southborough Society has sent off the first and most significant part of our archive to be digitised and are in the design stages of a new website that will display our photographs, postcards, maps and articles for the public to have access to for the first time. There was a preview at some of these rarely seen images and artefacts that link to Southborough Common as part of this group show.

Southborough Society’s sixteen panels detailing the Society and what it does, our Digitisation Project, The Common, St Peter’s Church and School and Cricket in Southborough.

At 1pm some fifty people gathered for a guided circular walk led by Ian Johnstone around the Common. Ian was taken back by just how well attended the walk was; testament to how grateful local residents are of this beautiful area and how interested they were to find out more about the history of the Common.

Ian Johnstone, Kent High Weald Partnership, about to start the Circular Walk yesterday.

The walk was based on ‘Walk One’ of the series of Southborough Common walks which featured ten points of interest, including the veteran oak and beech trees, the gravel pit, charcoal platform, former windmill site and the horse ring. Listening to the conversations, many people commented about how, although the regularly walk in the Common they didn't know about its fascinating history and rarely stopped to really look at the flora and fauna.

A really warm and friendly atmosphere amongst the walkers . Here they are heading up along the Wortleberry Wood Bank.

‘On the Boundary of Whortleberry Wood, 1892’. A photograph printed from a glass plate negative in the Southborough Society archive collection.

The boundary of Whortleberry Wood is a distinctive man made bank that was built up to enclose the wood from the ‘adjacent wood pasture and to prevent grazing animals from browsing the coppiced woodland’. Ian informed the walkers that evidence still remained towards the top of the bank of the iron fence that can be seen in the above photograph.

In the area known as the ‘Pineys’.

Heading towards one of the veteran oaks.

The exhibition was buzzing throughout the day and we would like to thank all the visitors for coming along and also Ian Johnstone (KHWP) and Tony Palmer and Di Drummond (SHAAS). Last but not least, we would like to thank the National Heritage Lottery Fund who has enabled us all to participate in such a wide-ranging and beneficial project for the local community.

If you are interested in finding our more about Southborough Common and volunteering and local archaeology, check out the links below:

https://khwp.org.uk/

http://southboroughcommon.co.uk/

https://www.southborougharchaeology.org/

Southborough's Coat of Arms Explained...

Southborough’s coat of arms taken from the colour book plate from ‘Patchwork’ magazine.

Southborough’s rich history and the trades on which it was founded are contained within its coat of arms. Until recently, a rather faded coat of arms had resided above the entrance to the Council Offices. Now, as we await the construction of the Town’s community Hub, the centre of Southborough no longer displays its official emblem representing our town.

In the Southborough Society archives, there is an excellent explanation of our Town Coat of Arms which is perhaps not widely known. It appears in the Patchwork magazine, published in 1988, compiled by local people to raise funds for Age Concern. The article was written by J.M. Kirkness, Chairman of The Southborough Society.

“To mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952, the Southborough Urban District Council commissioned a coat of arms from the Portcullis (The Master of Sinclair) at the College of Arms, and this was granted in 1953. In 1962, the motto ‘Propria tuemur’ was adopted, which is freely translated as ‘We look after what is ours’.”

The writer explains the significance of the imagery on the shield in proper heraldic terminology, but we have decided to abandon that and describe the design in plainer language. If you would like to see the original text a copy of Patchwork can be found in Southborough Library.

The shield, as shown in the illustration, is largely coloured red and gold. The Oak tree, in fine leaf at the bottom point of the shield, represents the former Bounds Oak, mentioned in the Domesday Book, growing on the Great Bounds estate. This was the site of the well-known Elizabethan mansion, demolished in the 1950s. The two sprigs of Broom, flanking the Oak, are a reference to High Brooms, once an open grassy area, known for the Broom bushes which grew there.

The ‘Torteau’ is the heraldic term for the small red circular shape featured towards the top of the shield. Sometimes it represents a loaf of bread, but here it is clearly refers to the cricket-ball making industry, important to Southborough, for more than a century.

To right and left of the circle are placed two rectangles, (Billets), in acknowledgement of the brick-making industry which, together with the gasworks, led to the growth of High Brooms. By 1885 there were two hundred employees working in the brickworks.

The black Ram’s Head, sitting on top of the helmet, suggests the reputed association of Southborough with weaving, although apparently there is no documentary evidence to support this. However, The Weavers restaurant, situated in a Tudor farm house (c.1570) was said to have been occupied by French Huguenots who were weavers. Since weaving was once a well-established industry throughout the Weald it may not be too fanciful to imagine a Huguenot family finding Southborough a congenial place to settle.

The shield with hand painted coat of arms given to all Council members and employees on the 31st of March, 1974 to mark the close of business of the Southborough Urban District Council.