Boxley House

Following a networking social in late 2023, I was approached by a venue management company regarding an upcoming project to launch an identity for a school site that was looking to diversify its offering out of term-time. The company had a proposal in place to manage the ‘events’ side on behalf of the school and the building’s future promotion was to be advertised discreetly, so as to differentiate the interests of the school and its students away from this new events venture.

 

There were several factors involved, including their on-site boarding students and administrative permissions that made it crucial for the new brand to possess a low-profile standing.

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As the sole creative on their small team, I had been invited to visit the site with the venue management company and join their assessment for how they would install wayfaring signage and split the venue spaces into distinct areas. Up until this point no identity had been set in stone, it was simply ‘the school that wanted to become a venue’ and so it remained nameless before the scope had been established.

 

After the meeting, we reconvened and set out the key targets to consider for the identity;

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• Must appeal to the wedding market, prospective bride/grooms and wedding planners.

• Branding should stand alone from the school and be distinct in its appeal.

• Contain separate sections & recognisable ‘zones’ that are appropriate to the venue in order to cordon off areas and manage expectations for the hire.

• External buildings to be marketed as ‘smaller hire spaces’ and marked accordingly.

• Create a traditional ‘stately home’ impression to match the 17th Century core of the building.

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From the targets above, I began researching the area of Boxley (Boxley Village, Kent) and the surrounding foothills, immersing myself in historical data and material that referenced the ‘original’ house on the site. I found many gaps in the modern records for the house itself which in the last century had changed hands and registered purposes, lost acreage and benefitted from pre-fab extensions.

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On reviewing the book "The History of Boxley Parish", by John Cave-Browne I discovered a direct reference to the building: “Thus the land above the Church was formed into a separate property, and became known as the Boxley House estate.” I was overjoyed at this discovery as this gave provenance to the history of the house that had since been overlooked and pushed aside. On suggesting this direction to the team, we agreed that to restore its namesake as closely as possible to its prior prestige made the most sense in sharing the property’s story with prospective hirers. Within that same book I had also discovered the coats of arms of families that had inhabited Boxley - these served as pertinent inspiration for our ‘zoning problem’ and allowed me to create real iconography out of these crest that stayed relevant to the house’s history.

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A top priority during the branding project was to clearly communicate each area's amenities to accurately market what potential clients could expect. Boxley House was split into the following sections:

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• Boxley House - for hire of the main house: its atrium and private rooms)

• theRooms at Boxley House - covering 4 event rooms that stood annexed on the main site - these spaces were given the aforementioned crest identities.

• Boxley Grounds - for any and all hires that pertained to use of the outdoor spaces.

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It is not uncommon for a large site to contain sub-identities and, before proceeding, I took care to prepare my client for the management of each and how the team’s external media would communicate this to customers. The danger of sub-identities is pulling focus away from the central identity and in order to mitigate this issue the typefaces and shape language we prepared matched the core ‘Boxley House’ look and feel.

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To create a cohesive voice, Boxley House had new wayfaring and signage media designed. The majority of the media created for Boxley’s event side was quick to install on event days where necessary and easy to uninstall at night when the event space needed to be turned back to the school faculty the following day.

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Boxley House was, unfortunately, not fated to last forever. The school ceased to continue partnership with my client due to an inevitable private sale of the site in 2024; however, in the short period of time I was involved with the identity of Boxley House the venue team had successfully found prospective hirers and completed; 3 Events in ‘Boxley House’, 9 Events in ‘theRooms At Boxley’ and 1 Event in ‘Boxley Grounds’.

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My client maintains that this was a great result from a limited tenure with the venue and remarked that, should it have been allowed to continue, this setup would have flourished under our commitment and development of the site’s branding. At the time of writing (July 2025) Boxley House is still listed for sale.