Severnside Press - a letterpress time capsule

In June 2018 we became the proud owners of the contents of the shop, print and composing rooms of the Severnside Press, High Street, Newnham-on-Severn.
After much deliberation as to the feasibility (sanity?) of the project we simply could not bear the thought that the treasures of this long established business – a time capsule of 19th and 20th century printing and social history – might be broken up and dispersed or, worse, lost forever.
Between June 2018 and October 2018 we, a middle aged (cough) couple with a bewildered Border Terrier in tow, set about the back breaking and laborious task of moving the entire printing establishment out of its old Victorian home into a small industrial unit in Ross-on-Wye.
It was quite a challenge; the floorboards in the old print shop were fragile, the doorways narrow and many of the heavier artefacts were on the first floor, accessible by only a very narrow and rickety staircase. With the ingenuity that Adrian always seems to pull out of the hat at times like these a scheme was devised to bring all of the weighty type cases, standing jobs, blocks, nipping presses, numerable chases etc down to ground level by the means of a home made ‘sledge’ on the end of a rope. The type cabinets came down through sheer determination.
The assistance of knowledgeable print engineers was necessary to carry out the very heavy lifting of the four letterpress printing machines – the Wharfedale in particular, had to be dismantled into its constituent parts to be carefully manoeuvred through the shop doorway with literally millimeters to spare. These were then placed into storage for a short while.
In January 2019 with further assistance from Steve and Dan, our print engineers, and an enormous flatbed truck and crane these prized beauties were brought into their new home. It’s a bit of a squeeze but with any luck all of these icons of a bygone printing age will soon be back in production once again.

Amongst the many splendid items recovered we have:
a Wharfedale c1895; an Arab c1900; an Albion 1859; a Heidelberg Platen c1938.
In addition we have eight type cabinets with over 200 cases of type – both wood and metal, plus a vast array of printed posters, business and social stationery file copies (some with works orders attached), books and magazines about the printing industry and associated ephemera.