Photographs of printing at Bembridge School and other images of the press

The 'ATCO' printing room, 1920

The oldest photograph of printing at Bembridge School has the title the ‘ATCO Printing Room’ and was taken in 1920. It’s one of three printing-related photographs published in 1936 in the fiftieth number of the school newspaper. It takes its name from the later use of the shed as a lawnmower store - and gives a good impression of the somewhat cramped conditions there. The others are a photograph of John Pearce, dated 1929, standing at a composing frame in the ‘Pavilion Composing Room’ - the press’s home between 1922 and 1931 - and one of ‘The Press-Room Today’, which gives an excellent view of the original layout of what was the purpose-built printing room used by the Yellowsands Press from 1931 until 1988 (it shows a young and slim Tom Stedman, too, assisting a boy compositor).

Composing in the arts and crafts room, c.1920

An unpublished photograph found in the oldest of the surviving school albums certainly dates from the early 1920s and probably shows the corner of the arts and crafts room (the pre-1965 woodwork room) used as a composing room until 1922. The workshop scene depicted is noticeably informal and improvisatory. A boy is composing type from cases roughly placed on a sideboard, the upper case propped up against the window frame.

The printing room in 1936, then five years old, showing the original layout.

There are at least two photographs of printing at Coniston, where the press was set up in a garage belonging to the Waterhead Hotel whence the school was evacuated in 1940. One is printed in Dearden’s Printing at Coniston, 1958, and shows Stedman supervising two boys working the Albion, while another boy apparently sets type. (Another, rather less informative photograph taken on the same occasion appeared in the illustrated supplement to the school newspaper, Christmas 1942.)

The printing room, 1950

In 1950, Picture Post - of whose publishers Hulton Press, John Pearse was by now general manager - sent a photographer to the school to record various activities. These images were to accompany the piece about Bembridge in an article by Ruth Bowley, ‘Shall I pay for my child’s education?’ published on 28th January. But in the event none of the photographs of printing were used. Copies were obtained by the school, however, and one was published in the spring number of the school newspaper. It shows ‘Hope, Tweed and B. Miller’ operating the Albion, still in the far left-hand corner of the printing room (as seen from the door), but now against a slightly altered background to that of 1936. (Among the school records there is another, unpublished photograph from the same session showing the boys failing to hold a sober, workmanlike pose.)

Roughly contemporary with the Picture Post photographs are two, very amateur, snaps of the same corner of the printing room. They’re chiefly notable for the mess they show, and in one, the parlous state of the covering of the tympan, which looks to be in shreds.

The printing room in the early 1950s

Unfortunately, there is a dearth of photographs after the 1950s, which makes it difficult to trace the changes in the layout of the printing room before that more spacious and familiar arrangement, established for many years, which followed the expansion of floor-space after the opening of the adjoining Whitehouse Memorial Building in 1965.  There is, however, a photograph of the last Printer, Jim Dearden, taken in situ, in 1964. The view of the printing room is towards the opposite corner to that just described, including the door, and shows the stone centrally placed, with composing frames to left and right. The presses (there was the treadle platen as well as the Albion by then) would have been behind the camera.*

The cover of The Small Printer, June 1966

In a rather frustrating photograph published on the cover of the Small Printer in 1966 we can see the Albion in its new position, immediately to the right as one entered the printing room - and just visible is part of the stud-frame wall of the corner office where one would go to pick up a composing stick and a strip of copy, customarily laid out on the stone. But the picture’s not at all clear, as the background has been deliberately obscured to make a diagram of the Albion, the main purpose of the image.

After 1988 printing was moved to two rooms which were part of the former coach house or stable block belonging to the hotel which became School (and later) Old House. But except for a second or two of promotional video made in 1993, no photographs are known.

Not all graphic images of the Yellowsands Press were made with a camera, however. There are at least two pupil-executed cuts of the press, or ideas of the press. Imperfectly designed, but nonetheless arresting, is Geoffrey Kadleigh’s linocut from the mid-1930s. Then there is the more traditional representation, echoing the earliest historical images of the wooden hand-press, which adorned the cover of the school newspaper at Christmas 1952. Finally, we must not forget the excellent device, most familiar from the colophon to the Nine Lessons & Carols orders of service, introduced in the mid-1960s.

Linocut by G. Kadleigh, from the mid-1930s.

* Two photos from 1964 have recently (April 2020) come to light showing the position of the presses at the far end of the printing room. The Albion was then more centrally placed than before, presumably to make room for the Printer's desk which was in front of the window on the far left. The treadle platen can be seen in its original position on the far right. (Thanks to Mike Conder.)