HIGH STREET MERCH!

Just in time for Christmas! We will be selling our prints and calendars featuring the wonderful artwork of Southborough High Street created by the talented young artists from Southborough C of E Primary School.

You will have read all about this collaboration between the Society and Southborough C of E Primary School before on our blog - but in case you missed it, check it out here.

You can order A3 sized prints of the High Street (as seen above) for the very affordable price of £5 each (!) and the A4 calendars are priced at £10 each. It’s also good to know these are all locally printed (just down by the old High Brooms Brickworks, by the amazing team at BDP Media), so as well as raising funds for the Society and our local primary school, we are also supporting a local business. It ticks all the boxes!

Importantly, your orders must be received by Monday, 30th of November. To make your order, please download a form and email to us: thesouthboroughsociety@gmail.com.

A Word.doc order form can be downloaded here and a PDF order form available here.

The prints and calendars will be available from week beginning 7th of December, or earlier if possible. We will be in touch with those who have placed an order to let them know where they can be collected from shortly. Prints and calendars ordered from parents with pupils at Southborough C of E Primary School will be distributed to students to take home.

The A3 print features many of the shopfronts illustrated by Southborough C of E pupils, Aimee, Codie, Jacob, Phoebe, Poppy, Shaun and Sienna.

Individual shop prints can be printed to order at A3 or A4 size, but to do this please get in touch at thesouthboroughsociety@gmail.com or head to our contact page here.

Thank you again to the local businesses who contributed towards this project, without your support it would not have been possible.

For anyone interested in purchasing Elaine Gill’s fabulous Southborough High Street Map that was on display in the shopfront of Hardman & Hemming during the Heritage Open Days High Street exhibition, you can download Elaine’s order form here.

Happy shopping!

High Street

As our contribution to the Heritage Open Day Weekend we are proud to be able to exhibit the wonderful work created by Southborough C of E Primary School. Their work will, appropriately, be on display in the shop front windows of The House Company on the Parade for both weekends (and up during the week if you are passing by).

To complement the illustrations, we will also be displaying archive images of the early 20th Century high street and a new work by illustrator Elaine Gill, in the window of Hardman and Hemming, bespoke tailors, along with images of shopfronts and advertisements from the same era in the window of Pets Fayre.

A sample of the displays for the ‘High Street’ exhibition.

We would like to thank Tracy (The House Company), Stuart & Stuart (Hardman & Hemming) and Sarah (Pet’s Fayre) for generously giving up their shopfronts and creative expertise for the display of the exhibition. We would also like to thank Woodwork, The Early Grey, Blooms, Henry Paul Funerals , Hardman & Hemming, Pet’s Fayre, Arty Farty Retreat and Elaine Gill for generously supporting us.

There will be an architectural scavenger hunt to encourage families to look more closely at the hidden details along London Road, all entries will be placed in a prize draw to win a high street themed prize.

More information about the scavenger hunt will be posted next week-so watch this space!

To download the Tunbridge Wells Open Days Booklet, click here. Or visit the website here.

Commemorating Fifty Years: A Collaboration between Southborough Primary School and the Southborough Society

This year, Southborough School marks the fiftieth anniversary of its move to its current site in Broomhill Park Road; 2019 also marks fifty years in the life of the Southborough Society. To commemorate this special event, pupils from Southborough Primary will be undertaking an art project, ably assisted by Claire Clements, the Art Co-ordinator.

The children will be undertaking an exploration of Southborough’s High Street and the collaboration between Southborough C of E Primary School and the Southborough Society is planned to commemorate 50 years in the life of both organisations.

Our high street is changing rapidly. If we look back at historical photographs and postcards, we can see how much the high street has changed in the last 50 years. Many of the shops and trades that would have seemed irreplaceable are now lost forever. Who now needs to visit a saddler or a milliner?!

Recording as artists what we see now will be valuable for future generations in understanding life in the early 21st century. It may be that camera shops and computer repair businesses come to be seen as exotic and strange as a fancy-goods shop!

The aim of this project is to create a snapshot of the high street; to document the sometimes-overlooked architecture of the everyday which contributes to the unique character of our town. Southborough’s high street includes buildings as old as the 16th century Weavers and as new as the planned retail spaces in the still to be built Hub development.

We are able to draw upon images from the Southborough Society’s archive of images of shopfronts, pubs, signage and street scenes and combine these with our own contemporary photographs.

Hartridge Bros Butchers, now Southborough Butchers.

Students have been working on a range of mixed media illustrations and have started to explore the drypoint etch print-making process. Their main inspiration has been drawn from Eric Ravilious’s 1930’s lithographs from ‘The High Street’ and the work of Kent based illustrator, Nina Cosford.

A lithographic illustration by Eric Ravilious’s ‘High Street’, published in 1938.

One of many studies of buildings and shopfronts by Hastings based illustrator, Nina Cosford.

Here is a sneak peek of some of the work in progress-the artwork is already looking excellent! We can’t wait to see the finished outcomes and be able to share how you can take away a part of the High Street for yourself! (Merch alert! - stay tuned!)

A pin up of some of their illustrations so far…

A detail of Yashar’s Fish Bar; collage with ink drawing overlay.

One of the artists starting the dry-point etching process.