Library & Archives Blog – Read all about it! Horne in the Archive

I was rifling through the archive looking for a 1925 Scarborough Standard to take to a pop-up in Scarborough and discovered the Horne Archive collection (D2.8) which contains numerous scrap books with cuttings showing a flashback of events for the years 1871-2000 plus boxes filled with historical documents relating to the paper and of course the 1925 Scarborough Standard!

The later editions of the event listings started to feature more pictures to illustrate those events. In the March 87 Flashback we see King Charles (Prince then) enjoying a joke during his historic visit to Skinningrove and Carlin How.

The Whitby Gazette was founded in Whitby, North Yorkshire, by Ralph Horne on January 6, 1854. In Jan 1827 Ralph Horne, who had learned his trade as an apprentice at Clark and Medd’s had recently established a printing press and bookseller’s, Horne and Richardson’s, at 18 Bridge Street.  He began publication of a monthly Whitby Magazine; discontinued after 1829. There is a copy of ‘The Whitby Repository’ from September 1827 with an article inside called ‘The Village Wedding’ where Edmund and Grace decided to stop wasting time and got married in January and clearly impatient with the formalities of the wedding:

“Then at times rushed across her mind the nuptial ceremony at the hymeneal altar – the solemn tones of the priest – Edmund plighting his troth, and bestowing the ring, while she would have to vow an unalterable love and fidelity to him for life. A gentle tremor seized her whole frame; and, sighing, she heartily wished the ceremony was over, whispering frequently to herself, “this is the unpleasantest part of marrying.”

Horne’s traded at this address until the Whitby Gazette was sold in April 1978. The Whitby Gazette started life as “Horne’s List of Visitors”; recording visitors to the seaside town and became a proper weekly newspaper in 1858, initially published twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays.

It also featured distance chart to neighbouring villages, tide times, railway timetable and the reason why Whitby should have its own press.

 The paper was privately owned up to march 1978; the new owners of Whitby Gazette were the Scarborough and District Newspapers Ltd., run by the Whittaker family. They stopped using Horne’s old flat-bed Cossar Press, acquired second-hand in 1956, and started a tabloid format printed in Scarborough by offset litho. Horne’s equipment and premises were used until the mid-1990s by Abbey Press, who did print for Tom and Cordelia Stamp’s Caedmon Press.

If you are interested in having a more in-depth look into this archive please contact [email protected] to arrange a viewing. We are open Tuesday to Friday 10am to 4pm.

By Claire Marris

Archive Development Officer

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