Your Tunbridge Wells

Overview

Your Tunbridge Wells was a free weekly newspaper published by KOS Media for Tunbridge Wells in Kent, in the south east of England. Launched in 2009, it was one of three additions that year to the publisher's 'your' series of free local papers for Kent towns, alongside yourdeal and yoursandwich. It holds a distinctive place in the series' history: when Archant KOS Media stopped printing its free weeklies in January 2011, Your Tunbridge Wells was the one title kept in print while its sisters were converted into online-only e-editions. It eventually closed in December 2012.

The paper should not be confused with the Times of Tunbridge Wells, an unrelated free weekly launched by One Media in 2015, several years after the KOS title had disappeared. Nor was it connected with the town's long-established paid-for weekly, the Kent and Sussex Courier, against which it competed.

The Town It Served

Royal Tunbridge Wells is a spa town in west Kent, thirty miles south east of central London, close to the border with East Sussex on the northern edge of the High Weald. Its story begins in 1606, when the courtier Dudley, Lord North, discovered a chalybeate — iron-rich — spring. The waters drew fashionable society; Queen Henrietta Maria visited in 1630, and in the mid-eighteenth century, under the direction of Richard "Beau" Nash, the town and its colonnaded Pantiles walkway became one of England's most fashionable resorts, rivalling Bath. The Pantiles, first paved in 1700, remains the historic and tourist centre of the town.

Although the spa's popularity waned with the advent of sea bathing, the town continued to grow, and in 1909 King Edward VII granted it the prefix "Royal" in recognition of its popularity with the Royal Family — it is one of only a handful of English towns to hold the title. The town had a population of 59,947 in 2016, is the administrative centre of Tunbridge Wells Borough, and still derives much of its income from tourism. It was into this affluent, commuter-belt market — very different from the coastal towns served by several of its sister titles — that KOS Media launched its free weekly in 2009.

KOS Media and the 'Your' Series

KOS Media was founded in 2002 by Paul Stannard, a former executive with Adscene, Kent Regional Newspapers and Trinity Mirror Southern, and was based at Apple Barn, Smeeth, near Ashford. Its first newspaper, Kent on Sunday, was launched free in 2002 and went on to win national awards, including Free Weekly Newspaper of the Year at the Newspaper Society's Weekly Newspaper Awards. In the summer of 2007 the company introduced free local papers for different parts of Kent, published on Wednesdays, for Ashford, Canterbury, Dover, Maidstone, Medway, Shepway, Swale and Thanet.

In 2009 three more local newspapers joined the series: yourdeal, yoursandwich and your Tunbridge Wells — or "Your Tunbridge Wells", in the styling used by directory listings, which record the title with its own website at yourtunbridgewells.co.uk. Trade coverage described KOS Media as publishing ten free newspapers under the 'your' brand, competing across Kent with the family-owned KM Group. The Tunbridge Wells edition extended the network into the west of the county, complementing the Tonbridge edition published for the neighbouring town four miles to the north.

The Free Weekly Model in Tunbridge Wells

Until May 2009 all KOS Media newspapers were free. In June 2009 the group's Kent on Saturday and Kent on Sunday became paid-for in newsagents, with free copies diverted to business rounds and home delivery, while the mid-week local papers such as Your Tunbridge Wells remained free. All the titles were available as free page-turning e-editions and through Kentnews.co.uk, and KOS Media was among the first local media organisations to release its own iPhone application, allowing readers to browse its papers on mobile devices.

The group was more than a newspaper publisher. It operated YourKentTV, an internet television channel providing local news, features and sport, and published magazines including the Kent Weekend and Review entertainment and property guides, Isle Magazine for the Isle of Thanet, Visit Kent and Taste of Kent — and, under contract, BBC Radio Kent County Life for the BBC, a commission that prompted a complaint from the rival KM Group. At the time of the Archant takeover the company employed around seventy full-time staff.

Competition in the Town

Tunbridge Wells was already served by the Kent and Sussex Courier, the paid-for weekly for the Kent and Sussex border towns. Later figures quoted when a new rival launched in 2015 put the Courier's weekly sale at 20,754 copies — a substantial circulation for a single-town weekly, and a measure of the entrenched competitor a free KOS paper faced. KOS Media's offer was a free Wednesday alternative, funded entirely by advertising and aimed at readers and local businesses in a prosperous retail and commuter town. That commercial logic helps explain the decision, two years later, to keep this title in print when the rest of the series went digital-only: Tunbridge Wells was among the strongest advertising markets the 'your' network served.

The Archant Takeover

Archant, the Norwich-based regional publisher, had held a minority interest in KOS Media since 2005. Its annual report disclosed investments of £215,000 in 2008 and a further £300,000 in 2009, and recorded that its share of the company's losses grew from £158,000 to £196,000 as advertising revenues fell. In June 2010 Archant acquired KOS Media in full, for an undisclosed sum, following a restructuring of the holding company. Archant's chief executive Adrian Jeakings said the deal strengthened the group's existing presence in Kent and provided a springboard for further investment; managing director Paul Stannard stayed on to run the business.

The Last 'Your' Title in Print

In December 2010 the company announced an editorial restructure in response to challenging trading conditions, putting eight jobs at risk. Then, in January 2011, Archant KOS Media stopped printing all but one of its 'your' titles. HoldtheFrontPage reported that the publisher was continuing to print the Your Tunbridge Wells newspaper, while its other 'your' titles — it named Your Ashford, Your Canterbury, Your Maidstone and Your Sandwich — were only available online as e-editions produced with PageSuite technology. The printed series had had a print run of around 100,000 copies a week.

The move produced a reported fifty per cent increase in web traffic within three months, and managing director Paul Stannard said around 180,000 people a week subscribed to or accessed the e-editions, and that the switch had allowed the company to invest in and expand its two flagship papers, Kent on Saturday and Kent on Sunday. Trade reports noted, however, that the change was understood to have reduced total readership. Your Tunbridge Wells, uniquely, carried on as a printed free weekly through this period — the last survivor of the print series — while also appearing online, where defunct-newspaper listings record ninety-nine archived edition items for the title.

Closure

The reprieve lasted until the end of 2012. Defunct-newspaper listings record the closure of Your Tunbridge Wells in December 2012, alongside most of the remaining 'your' titles — Ashford, Canterbury, Dover, Maidstone, Medway, Shepway, Swale, Thanet, Sevenoaks, Tonbridge and Sandwich all closed in the same month — with only Your Deal lasting a further year, to December 2013. The KOS newspaper presence in Kent contracted to its weekend titles, and in November 2017 Kent on Sunday itself closed after fifteen years, with the group's Kentish Times titles transferred to Archant's East London base in Barking.

Aftermath in Tunbridge Wells

The town did not wait long for another free weekly. In March 2015 One Media launched the Times of Tunbridge Wells with an initial print run of 30,000 copies distributed from more than 150 outlets and by hawkers, a seventy-two-page first issue, and an editorial policy of carrying national and international news alongside local coverage. Its editorial director Richard Moore wrote that there was room for an alternative voice alongside the Kent and Sussex Courier, which the new paper praised. The Times later became a sister title to a Times of Tonbridge launched in 2016, and survived until February 2024, when its final print edition appeared and it moved online-only. That later history underlines the point Your Tunbridge Wells had already demonstrated: Tunbridge Wells could sustain a free weekly, but only under constant commercial pressure.

Legacy

Your Tunbridge Wells is remembered chiefly for the distinction it earned in January 2011, as the single title in a network of a dozen free Kent weeklies that its publisher chose to keep printing when the rest went online-only. That choice was a verdict on the town as much as on the paper — an affluent spa and commuter town whose advertisers and readers made print viable a little longer than elsewhere. Its closure in December 2012, three years after launch, closed the west Kent chapter of KOS Media's 'your' experiment and left the Courier once again as the town's only weekly newspaper, until a new generation of freesheet publishers tried again.