feature

Libelle: From H.G Wells to Langham Press!

Langham Press

Of the many comments the magazine has received over the years, the most frequent is in praise of the quality of the printing and the glossy, colourful appearance. Well, credit must be attributed to Langham Press – and the former Burlington Press at Foxton – who have been with us since 2000.

The magazine has published several books printed by the press. The Burlington Press printed the book ‘Melbourn 2000’ in that year – an extensive photographic record of the village at the turn of the millennium, produced by the magazine, and in 2004 Burlington printed ‘Pictorial Melbourn’, a historical photographic walk through the village. Langham Press, who took over the Burlington in 2012, have printed several publications designed and produced by the magazine for clubs and groups in the village. And in 2018 they reprinted our local history book ‘A Glimpse into Melbourn’s Past’, which had proved to be very popular.

In 2019 Langham Press moved premises from Foxton to Whittlesford, from where their state-of-the-art digital and lithographic printing still manages to provide clientele such as local businesses, charities, educational establishments, designers and publishers with an old-fashioned friendly service. They have continued to help and advise the magazine, providing a fast turnaround and quality printing, and have helped in creating an efficient delivery system saving us many hours of work, for which we are extremely grateful. For more information visit the website at: www.langhampress.co.uk or Telephone 01223870266

And so a Quiz

Question: What links our printers with the father of science fiction? Answer: Our printer’s predecessors published and sold the first books that HG Wells wrote. It is a story of two people from fairly humble backgrounds making good and of a mini Port Sunlight in our midst.

William Briggs, the originator of the publishing company, was born in Leeds in 1861. His father was a monumental mason and his mother was the daughter of a clock maker. By 1887, at the age of 26, William had gained a degree equivalent in mathematics and had founded what can be regarded as a precursor to today’s Open University. He called it the ‘University Correspondence College’ and it was one of the first distance and flexible learning schemes to degree standard; taking advantage of the 1858 royal charter for the ‘University of London External Programme’. At this time, Briggs selected Cambridge as the address for his business; perhaps hoping the academic kudos of the location would be an advantage. He chose the name Burlington House for his offices.

Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley Kent in 1866. His father was a domestic gardener, professional cricketer for Kent and unsuccessful shopkeeper. His mother was a domestic servant. Already fired by a love of literature from the age of eight, Wells endured a miserable apprenticeship as a draper from the age of fourteen but managed to get a job as a pupilteacher at the age of seventeen, (a senior pupil who acted as a teacher to younger children). From there, he managed to win a scholarship to the ‘Normal School of Science’ (now part of the Imperial Collage London) studying biology under Thomas Henry Huxley (Darwin’s Bulldog). Wells stayed at that school until 1887, earning one guinea per week, and writes in his autobiography of ‘constantly being hungry’.

Around that same time, 1887, H G Wells writes he had “received a mysterious communication from a person of the name of Briggs, requesting the honour of an interview at Cambridge”. Briggs offered to pay Wells £2 per week to take over the correspondence course in biology. Moreover, if Wells were then to pass his degree with honours, Briggs

H G Wells

H G Wells’ first publication was the Text-book of Biology, published by the University Correspondence College Press.

promised him a permanent post teaching 30 hours per week and a guaranteed income of £4 per week. In due course, Wells passed his degree in zoology with first-class honours, and Briggs paid him £300 per year. In 1895, HG Wells wrote his first book: a biology textbook called ‘Text-Book of Biology’, in two volumes, which became a standard text. Briggs published it under the publishing business he had founded in the meantime: W. B. Clive & Co.

In 1898, Briggs acquired a printing operation in Cambridge in what is now Wellington House in East Road. He called this operation Burlington Press. By 1902, the stock in trade of the printing company amounted to £20,000 – the equivalent of over £2.3M in modern currency. At this point, Briggs set about buying up huge swaths of Foxton: Foxton Hall, (described in the 1914 Sale of Particulars as ‘A Freehold Country Residence, well screened from the road and approached by a beautiful winding carriage drive’), and two acres of land; Foxton House, with lodge, four acres of land, six acres of parkland, thirteen cottages and various other lots of wooded or grazing land; and Wildbores Farm in the centre of Foxton, where he then built his new printing factory and sixteen houses for his workers.

Thus, in 1908, Burlington Press of Foxton was born into a village that comprised 400 mainly thatched houses clustered around the church. What Briggs created in Foxton was similar to a mini Port Sunlight or mini Bourneville: the houses for his workers had running water, flushing toilets and a bath with a plughole. The workers were skilled and earned commensurate wages: men at the press earned £3 2s 6d per week, compared with the 30 shillings per week earned by their farm worker neighbours.

In 1932, Dr William Briggs died. His son Cecil succeeded him and ran the business very successfully until his retirement in 1964. Other family members carried on the management of the business until 1974 when workers received a letter informing them the works would close in June.

Coincidentally, also in 1932, a man called Paul Ridgeon was born. In the early 1970’s he and Barry Canning set up Cambridge Instantprint, aimed at providing rapid high quality printing services: ‘The fastest printer in the East’. Paul Ridgeon took over Burlington Press in 1974 and continued to run the company up until 2000 when it was taken over.

At the beginning, Dr Briggs’ company used the letterpress printing process with hand-built plates. They were state-of-theart at the time. When Paul Ridgeon took over the company in 1974, a steady programme of reinvestment in contemporary equipment took place. This included installing sheet-fed litho printers and modern digital systems enabling a quick turnaround of short-run stationery, brochures, manuals and training packs. The innovatory vision of Dr Briggs continues within the company to this day.

Above, the print room in 1908. The ‘state of the art’ letterpress printer capable of printing on a single side of a large sheet in one colour. In contrast the image shown at the top of page 21, shows a modern five-colour lithographic printer, capable of printing both sides of a sheet in multiple colours.

Above, the composition room at the Burlington Press in 1912. The compositor’s job was to create the pages by selecting each individual character from a ‘type case’, placing them in a ‘composing stick’. This gradually built up the text for each page, letter by letter, ensuring it read back to front. For this article you are reading, the compositor would have placed almost 8000 characters – by hand, including word spaces, each character approximately the thickness of a matchstick and about 10mm long. Right, a high-tech method of composing was also used at the Burlington with the introduction of the Linotype machine.

Essentially an extremely large typewriter capable of producing type from hot metal and placing them in a form.

Source: Printing in the Park by Don Challis