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

Last Weekend for High Street Merchandise

This weekend is your last chance to place your orders for prints and calendars, with the final deadline Monday 30th November. With this in mind, we thought we’d feature some of the other artworks that have been unseen so far.

The artists at Southborough C of E Primary explored a range of techniques and materials to create their high street illustrations: watercolour, ink drawings, collage and chine-collé etchings (where coloured and printed tissue paper is added to the etching plate). With such inspiring work it would be a shame not to showcase everything they created.

These additional illustrations can be ordered too - just make it clear on the order form which ones you are after and we are more than happy to oblige!

To make your order, please download a form and email it to us: thesouthboroughsociety@gmail.com

A Word.doc order form is available here and a PDF order form is available here.

Hand and Sceptre Hotel

Peter Hoare Antiques

The Gallery, Hairdressing Salon.

The first of two chine-colle prints of Hardman & Hemming.

Variation on the first print.

The House Company

Joe’s Barbers

Body Art Tattoo Studio

Dominos

Thank you for looking. If you like what we do and want to support a local charity, please join us. You can drop us a line here and we will send you a Membership Application Form.

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!

Through the Lens

Over the last year, in preparation for our digital archive, we have been trawling through the scans and we thought it would be interesting to take a look back at some highlights from our photographic competition since its inception in 2004. We also hope that this post serves as a reminder for you to enter your photographs for this year’s competition by the 30th of October! See details on how to enter here.

The competition started life as ‘Putting High Brooms and Southborough in the Picture’ and was later reinvented in 2009 as ‘Through the Lens’ as it now continues to be known.

The category of ‘Places’ has consistently received the highest number of entries in the competition and has recorded many recognisable/iconic views which clearly say ‘Southborough’. But the more changeable aspects of our town such as its people, the high street and its events tell us more about how our town has been transforming over time.

Below is a small selection of the entries from our archive, we hope you enjoy reminiscing!

The beauty of St Peter’s in snow, by Albert Dungate in 2009.

2019 student category winner, Freddie Knight, ‘St Peter’s Church Tower’.

The everyday, vernacular photography can tell us more about that point in time than images of well recognised buildings and beauty spots of Southborough. Shops that had been stalwarts of the high street have been photographed in their final days, as you can see from Howes, the Q8 Garage, Wisdoms, and the butchers. A particular highlight in Southborough was the passing of the Tour de France in 2007 which resulted in many entries documenting the peloton as it raced through our High Street.

The End of an Era: Howes of Southborough, 1953-2007 by Rita Scales.

Q8 Creations, London Road, 2007, by Bob Holly.

The Upholsterer: Michael Wisdom, 2006 by Peter Dillon.

Kevin Major: The Final Chop, 2008 by Fred Scales. Major & Sons was a family butcher, previously located on the corner of Western Road and Norton Road, now residential property.

‘A Bold Gendarme’, 2007, by Michael Tayler.

Blurred Colours of the Peloton: Tour de France, 8th July 2007, by Abu Subhan.

The Leaders Speeding Through: The Tour de France, 8th July, 2007 by Olywn Kinghorn.

Now gone: Horse Trough on Sceptre Hill, Southborough, 2013, by Rhys Kinghorn.

The people of Southborough and High Brooms have been sharing loads of fantastic photographs on Facebook, particularly throughout the lockdown period, so get your entries in now! Good luck!