ON MONDAY, November 21, 1955, Southern Newspapers’ new headquarters in Above Bar were officially opened by Admiral Earl Mountbatten of Burma.

The gleaming white building rose imposingly above the street, ready to throw its doors open for business. With a façade of Portland stone, imposing columns that were illuminated at night and the Echo clock, the building became an instant city landmark.

On that momentous day, Earl Mountbatten was accompanied by the Countess, fondly called Lady Louis, and a gathering of eminent people from all over Hampshire. To commemorate the occasion, Lady Mountbatten was presented with an antique silver box, which she said she would treasure all the more because the Echo was her favourite newspaper.

The ceremony held far more significance for the Echo staff - and the people of Southampton - than just a business opening the doors of a new office for the first time. It was symbolic of the city rebuilding itself and finally getting back to normal life after the devastation of the war. The Echo building was a symbol of the new Southampton, which had risen, proud and resilient, from the debris left by war.

Southampton had suffered tremendous damage from German bombs during the Second World War and the Echo at the heart of the city had suffered a direct hit. Southern Newspapers’ headquarters in Above Bar was one of the many buildings destroyed in the terrible air raid of Saturday, November 30, 1940. The offices were destroyed. All that remained was a head of charred debris and twisted girders. Somehow the pressroom at the back of the building survived intact. It was a night Southampton became a blazing mass that could be seen from as far away as Weymouth.

Before the dawn of Sunday, which saw this particular, terrible raid come to an end, emergency plans were already being executed to move production of the Southern Evening Echo to Bournemouth. It was at the plant of the paper’s sister publication, the Bournemouth Echo, that preparations to complete publication of Monday’s paper were made. Some reporters stayed in the city to gather information about Southampton’s blitz and tell as much of its story as they were allowed under wartime censorship and, while the Echo’s former office was still burning, the paper came out as usual that afternoon.

The process of getting from this ‘state of emergency’ production to opening the new office in Above Bar some 15 years later was an arduous one. The directors of the company wanted to rebuild the Echo offices in Southampton in May 1941 and orders were placed for new machinery but it was then decided to wait until the war was over and the whole town had been reconstructed. For two and a half years, until small, temporary premises were built on the Above Bar site, drivers had to travel 60 miles each day before they even delivered a single copy of the paper.

After the end of the war, the building of a new Southern Daily Echo office was delayed by the Southampton Corporation’s inability to agree on a central reconstruction plan. Several times the corporation announced it intended to compulsory purchase land in the city centre, which would have meant that the Echo would have been forced out of its home. This meant that for at least five years businesses in the heart of the town were forced to carry on their business in temporary accommodation - and for the Echo it took even longer.

Construction of the new building was hampered by the need to maintain production of the newspapers while the work took place. It wasn’t until 1952 that the first part of the new headquarters was opened. On December 1 the Southern Echo moved into part one of its new home, the section facing Portland Street, which housed the production plant, publishing department and editorial offices.

The remainder of the site was ready to be cleared for the next section of the building, which would include part of the new pressroom. Three years later, in 1955, the hard work of many years reached fulfilment when the handsome bronze doors of Southern Newspapers’ new headquarters in Above Bar were officially opened.

On this historic occasion the Southern Evening Echo looked back at 67 years of continuous publication in Southampton. And with the new building open for business it looked forward to an exciting new chapter in its history.

Equipped with huge presses capable of printing 180,000 copies of the paper in an hour, the latest technology, fashionable colour schemes and the newest thing in lighting - fluorescent bulbs - the offices oozed modernity.

The Echo has grown up with modern Southampton and its and the city’s fate has been intertwined. As the years passed the technology of the newspaper was constantly updated.

The Above Bar offices underwent many changes to cope with new technology but as the company geared up for the millennium the decision was taken to create a purpose-built publishing and printing centre at Redbridge.

In March 1995, Southern Newspapers’ company chairman, John Salkeld, cut the first turf at Redbridge to begin construction at the site.

In 1996 the striking, £35m Test Lane development opened which put the Echo at the forefront of the newspaper publishing and printing industry in Europe. The £35m centre represented a giant leap into the new millennium for the newspaper. Countless numbers of files and historic editions of the newspaper had to be moved with clockwork efficiency during an Easter weekend as the newspaper changed addresses. It was a huge operation that saw more than a century of Daily Echo history relocated as the Daily Echo continued to stride into the modern age.