Southborough is a town and civil parish in the borough of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England.

It lies immediately to the north of the town of Tunbridge Wells and includes the district of High Brooms, with the A26 road passing through it.

Arrowheads and stone axe heads provide evidence of ‘’'prehistoric'’’ habitation of Southborough while burial sites from both the Bronze and Iron Ages have also been unearthed.

The site of the Castle Hill Iron Age Fort, dating back to 315 BC, lies in the Eastern valley.

Little is then known about the district until the Norman Conquest as it was the most sparsely populated part of the Weald due to the almost impenetrable forest.

Richard Fitz Gilbert (later de Clare) was rewarded for his part in the conquest with land;[6] one such grant was the Lowey of Tunbridge, an area of land equating with the holdings of a manor, which covered some 20,660 acres (8347h) on the Weald and across the River Medway valley.

Under Elizabeth I it had again reverted to the Crown: she bestowed it on Sir Richard Sackville who sold it to Thomas Smythe of Westernhanger.

The whole area was part of the Royal forest of Southfrith until about the middle of the 16th century, reserved by royalty for hunting.

[citation needed] From 1639, lodging houses appeared in Southborough to accommodate visitors to the newly discovered chalybeate spring at The Pantiles, Tunbridge Wells.

[7] Iron was worked in the area since prehistoric times, since the underlying rock (the iron-rich sandstone of the Hastings Beds which make up the Weald) provided the raw material.

From the mid-16th century onwards there were a number of water-powered furnaces on the two streams running through the town: one at Modest Corner; and three on the Southborough Bourne.

The forges probably continued working until the 18th century when the making of iron became uneconomical and in 1771 the sites were taken over for gunpowder manufacturing hence the name Powder Mill Lane.

Apart from that heavy industrial employment, people in Southborough were mainly occupied in Agriculture, Textiles and Transport: trades such as Blacksmiths, Coachbuilders and Harness makers.

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: it is now an industrial estate.

The Twinning Charter signed by both towns formally resolved to honour the twinning relationship by establishing and maintaining friendly relations with each other, to foster and develop mutual understanding and respect between the people of their respective administrative areas, to favour all kinds of links between the two regions especially in the educational and cultural fields, to encourage exchange visits and to develop human and cultural relationships and establish a firm foundation for future understanding, respect and friendship between their people for all time.

Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC South East and ITV Meridian.