  We report the discovery of three L dwarfs in the solar vicinity within 30
parsecs. These objects were originally found as proper motion objects from a
combination of R and I photographic plates measured as part of the SuperCOSMOS
Sky Surveys. We subsequently identified these objects as bona fide brown dwarf
candidates on the basis of their R-I colour, as first criterion, and
subsequently their J-K colours when the infrared data were available from the
2MASS database. Spectroscopic observations in the optical with the ESO
3.6m/EFOSC2 and in the near-infrared with the NTT/SOFI led to the
classification of their spectral types as early L dwarfs.
