FOR its May meeting, the History Of Reading Society learnt about The Black Arts in Reading, thanks to a talk given by Paul Joyce, who had worked in the printing industry in Reading.
He took us back to the beginning, to 1723 when the first printing press in the town was set up to produce its first local newspaper, the Reading Mercury.
Rivals emerged in the following century, supporting different political interests – the Chronicle, Herald, Observer, Standard and the Evening Post among them.
During the earlier period, local papers relied very much on news from London, and it was noticeable that their offices were all close to the railway station.
We were also reminded of the importance of newspaper sellers on the streets, now only a distant memory.
There were lots of illustrations of front pages and advertisements, the buildings the papers had occupied, and rare pictures of the interiors of their printing works.
Technological changes were outlined – from letterpress and loose blocks of type to linotype and filmset, from the platen to the cylinder, and from hand operation to steam power and electricity. The presses were used for other kinds of work, some of them for producing newspapers for nearby towns.
Premises of other notable printers were illustrated, with examples of their work – such as Blackwell’s, Snare’s, Horniman’s, Ingall’s, Rusher’s, G. R. Smith’s, Lovejoy’s, Bradley’s, Heppell’s and the Valpee Printing Company. There was the multi-talented H. T. Morley of Kings Road, and Greenslade’s, the colour printers farther along the road. There was Poynder’s, the “artistic” printers who designed their own “Reading” typeface, and who were taken over by Lamport Gilbert.
And then there were the larger firms of national importance. There was a photograph taken inside the printing works of Huntley, Boorne and Stevens, manufacturers of air-tight biscuit tins.
We tend to forget that at one time they all had to have paper labels.
Petty and Sons of Leeds opened a works on Katesgrove Lane. When it burned down in 1900 they were able to buy The Queen’s Hall in Valpy Street as their Southern Printeries. The firm left Reading in 1957.
The Co-operative Wholesale Society built a very large printing works on Elgar Road in 1933, where our speaker had worked.
They were closely followed by the Berkshire Printing Company, whose new works on Oxford Road opened in 1934 and did all the printing for Brooke Bond tea, and Oxo. Wyman’s, later Cox and Wyman’s, in Cardiff Road, large-scale printers of paperback books, disappeared from the scene only in recent years.
The talk brought home the importance of the printing industry to Reading’s economy, and from the conversation afterwards, it was obvious that a number of us wished that the talk and images could be turned into a book we could take home.
For more on the society and its future events, log on to: https://historyofreadingsociety.org.uk
VICKI CHESTERMAN
