High Brooms

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High Brooms is a north eastern suburb of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England, near Southborough.

[edit] History and Origins

The origins of the name High Brooms comes from ‘broom growing near a bridge’ or ‘broom growing on a ridge’. Its earliest recorded form, Bromgebrug in 1270, suggests Old English roots of brom (broom) with either brycg (bridge) or hrycg (ridge). Somewhere along the way this affix was dropped, however, and replaced by the more general qualifier ‘high’.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century employment in the area was mainly agricultural with the necessary trades of blacksmiths, coach builders and harness makers. The local area consisted of a number of isolated hamlets including Southborough, Nonsuch Green, Holden Corner, Modest Corner and a few houses near the Common, with High Brooms being a desolate tract inhabited by Gypsies and vagabonds.

Whilst the local village of Southborough began to expand rapidly from 1879 (when the Holden Estate was sold and laid out to accommodate 165 new dwellings), the High Brooms Brick and Tile Company started to build houses for its employees and the area expanded.