Not only has The Gazette changed in its appearance over the years but there have also been major changes in the way it is produced. Reporter HUGH CADMAN looks back on how it has gone to press during its 125 years

THE first copies of the Hants and Berk Gazette in 1878 were printed on a steam-powered press at the Bird Brothers premises in Church Street, Basingstoke.

But it is since the end of the Second World War that the speed of change has really quickened. Since that time, there have been five changes of press, including the transfer of all printing to Newsquest's £35million printing works in Redbridge, Southampton, in 1998

Bill Bays, 78, became press manager at The Gazette after starting work in 1946 when he came home from the Royal Navy.

The Gazette was then a large broadsheet and was printed in Church Street in a print hall on the opposite side of the road from the current Gazette offices.

The paper was produced on a flatbed Wharfedale press made in Yorkshire which required the attention of three staff.

However, Mr Bays of Kelvin Hill, Basingstoke, reckons there were at that time about 20 compositors, whose job was to put together the typefaces for printing.

He said: "We did everything, in truth. The newsprint came in flat sheets and you had to carry them up from the entrance in Church Street. When we needed a folding machine, we built it from bike chains - and it worked!"

Keith West and Colin Geary were both compositors at The Gazette. Mr West, who joined the company in 1943, said the typesetting was done by hand, using steel type or by using complicated-looking machines with melting pots. One of these linotype machines is still preserved in the editorial room at The Gazette.

Mr West said: 'There were two when 1 first went there, but all the bigger adverts were set by hand."

Mr Geary said it was not possible to be a left-handed compositor when he started, because of the "stick" used to hold hand-set type. "The type would fall out," he said.

Keith Cordery, regional pre-press manager for Newsquest until the end of 2000, started work at The Gazette in 1958 at the age of 15 as an apprentice compositor in the hot metal age.

Mr Cordery said the linotype machines could only accommodate five different styles of typeface - known as fonts whereas with hand-setting there were many more options. But some of the print sizes meant the type was very small indeed and it was quite labour-intensive to pick it all out by hand from cases and then return, or "dis", it back to the right places.

The linotype machine worked by releasing letter moulds from a magazine when the operator tapped the keys. It assembled them in a stick by mechanical means and a cast was then taken using molten metal from the crucible. The metal was a mixture of 85 per cent lead, 11 per cent tin and four per cent antimony

Mr Cordery said: "The metal meant there was always a very distinct smell in the typesetting room, and it was always very warm."

The Wharfedale press had by then given way to a Cossar, which was British-made. A second unit and a folder were added to the press to increase its capacity

Mr Cordery said: 'The Cossar press was quite different from presses as you understand them today.

'The paper was stationary when it took the impression because the type was flat and not on a cylinder."

He said of the Cossar: "It was reliable because it was simple by today's standards. We printed a 32-page paper but could add another eight to bring it to a maximum of 40. The press was still working in the early 1970s before photo-typesetting took over."

In the days when the paper only came out on a Friday, printing started at about 5pm on a Thursday night and went on until 10pm. Subsequently, some parts of the paper - like the property section - were printed earlier, but the night could still not be over until 2am.

Fridays were taken up with jobbing printing and the dirty job of recycling the lead used to make up the type.

By 1975 operating in the town centre had become increasingly difficult. The Midweek Gazette had begun in 1967 and the volume of work had increased with the expansion of the town.

So, when the paper moved to its current Pelton Road premises in Houndmills, a new British-made Goss Headliner press was incorporated into the building.

This was a different sort of press in which the paper was constantly moving and the impression was taken from a plate on a revolving cylinder.

Mr Cordery said: "With the Goss came the demise of hot metal. We went to computerised typesetting, which was fairly forward-looking in those days."

The process included "pasting up" cut-out parts of bromides which were sensitised sheets of paper bearing text. A film of the pasted-up page was then prepared and the plate was prepared from a special light-sensitive polymer which hardened enough to be used in printing.

This press was in place until 1990 when it was replaced with the web offset Rockwell Gazette press, which was made in France by an American company. This used a sensitised plate which would only accept ink where it was required.

Mr Cordery said: "This gave us access to colour for the first time. Before that, all we could do was put a green banner on the front page."

This stayed in place until 1998 when printing of The Gazette moved to the new purpose-built plant at Redbridge in Southampton.

This remarkable operation uses a Man Geoman press which can print 70,000 pages per hour and six million copies per week.

It is a 24/7 operation and has a contract to produce The Daily Mail, among other publications.

Alan Cranham, the Basingstoke pre-press manager for The Gazette, the Andover Advertiser and Salisbury Journal, said: "Even now, it is still pretty impressive when you see it. We are sending pages there by computer link every day apart from Monday and Saturday."

The vast Redbridge plant uses aluminium plates fitted to a cylinder, with eight pages per cylinder, and the staff monitor its working from a sound haven".

Mr Cranham added: "Ink has now got a lot better. It used to be paraffin-based, but now it dries more quickly and is absorbed a lot better."

He said printing the paper is a lot of work, explaining: "With something like our Friday Gazette, you have a huge volume of colour and a fairly short run. They call it 'The Log' at Redbridge because it is so thick and so much work."

The times have clearly changed for the way the newspaper is produced. But, just as it was 125 years ago, the deadlines have to be strictly adhered to week in, week out.