‘We ran for our lives if someone dropped some heavy type in case the ceiling came down’

4:19pm Tuesday 7th February 2006

Several former employees from the old High Street printing works have been speaking to reporter Clara Story with tales stretching back to before wartime, recalling a different era of the printed word.

IN 1990, everything changed for the printers of the Bucks Free Press.

A unique set of printing skills had had their day, and our outdated printing press at Gomm Road was decommissioned.

Printing is now contracted out to Oxford and runs on a modern digital press. Skilled printing operators then were on a seven-year apprenticeship. Today, techniques such as linotype hot metal printing are a distant memory.

But many of our former workers can tell of the decades at High Wycombe's High Street printing works where giant metal presses ran all night, and girls in the binding room mixed paste for blotting paper.

In 1934, when she was just 14-years-old, Marjorie Priest joined the binding department of the BFP's printing works.

The department consisted of eight women and she worked on a machine which folded and stapled newspaper supplements for the pay of 12 shillings a week.

Mrs Priest is now 85, and has lived in her home in Totteridge Drive, High Wycombe, since the end of the Second World War. She met her husband Maurice, who is 90 this year, during the three years she worked for the BFP.

She said the job was "good and bad", and remembers having to work all night after the printers made a mistake with a special edition of the paper. The edition, for King George V's silver jubilee in 1935, came back the wrong colour and the whole company extended their shift to 24 hours to rectify the mistake.

She said: "I was young, so I just accepted it. We worked from eight in the morning until the next day."

She also processed blotting paper and remembers it as a messy job. "We had to mix our own paste and dilute this sticky stuff with water," she said.

Ken Essery, 84, joined the High Street works just after the Second World War as a linotype operator setting the metal type for adverts. Mr Essery had lived in Plymouth working for the Western Morning News, but found himself unable to find a home in the harsh climate of postwar Britain.

He was lured to Buckinghamshire by an offer of help by the BFP. They pledged to give him a loan of £400 to put a deposit on a house and help him get a mortgage from the council.

Mr Essery bought a house in Desborough Avenue for £2,000 over 50 years ago where he still lives with his wife Barbara, 82.

He said he worked hard on the night shift, but added: "The people there were a good lot. The presses were going every night. We started at five o'clock at night and worked right through until six in the morning. Sometimes we had to come in at two in the afternoon." he said.

Mr Essery remembers a tumbledown building and was glad of the relocation to Gomm Road in 1956. He said of the High Street factory: "It was terrible. It was like a great big barn."

A former night shift colleague, David Gantzel, agreed. Mr Gantzel, now 67, joined the printing works in 1954 for a seven-year apprenticeship. He met his wife Joyce, 69, there where she worked as a binder. He said: "The building would have been condemned today. We ran for our lives if someone dropped some heavy type, in case the ceiling came down."

In 1954, printers Merritt and Hatcher bought the Bucks Free Press and rumour was rife among the workers that a new factory would be built near Wycombe Marsh.

Unable to stand it, the manager sent the 16-year-old Mr Gantzel out on his bike, with strict instructions not to come back until he had found the new site.

He said: "After hours I finally pushed my bike up a rutted, unmade road leading to Bambergers wood yard. Eureka I had found it!

"It was just some wooden pegs in a piece of land, and a board saying Proposed site for the BFP'."

When the works moved, the BFP decided to pay the difference in bus fare for the workers whose journey had been increased. This continued until those workers left their jobs, said Mr Gantzel.

Mr Essery retired before the printing works was closed, but Mr Gantzel, went to work for Chiltern Railways after he was made redundant.

He continued to write a column, Rusticus, for the BFP for some years. Now retired, he lives in Roberts Ride in Hazelmere with his wife.

On the 100th anniversary, all the male employees were given an engraved cigarette lighter, and the women were given a make-up compact, said Mr Gantzel.

In December we will be celebrating a century and a half of extraordinary change.

If you have memories of our 150-year history please contact Clara Story on 01494 755086 or at cstory@london.newsquest.co.uk

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