London 1981

Peter MARSHALL


Stamford St, Southwark, 1981
29u-24: works, offices,

You can click on the image to go to the next picture

In a third image I used a longer lens to look more closely at the most interesting part of the image, the name board for Harrild & Sons, the well known printers and suppliers of printing machinery and the for sale notice.
 
Wikipedia tells me that 'The company was founded in 1809 by Robert Harrild at Norwich Street, London.' He was born in Bermondsey in 1780 and came from a family of Thames watermenand opened a print shop there in 1801. Although not the inventor of composition rollers rather than leather ink balls for inking plates his demonstration of them changed the entire industry'.
 
Later he moved into the City, working at various addresses including Norwich St, Grteat Eastcheap, Friday St, and Great Distaff Lane, and printed for newspapers and well known publishers as well as his own publications. But from around 1830 his company had given up printing and moved into producing virtually everything needed by the print industry. After a succesful exhibit at the Great Exhibition in 1851 the company moved to extensive works, The Fleet Press on Farringdon St. Now a small part of the premises is the pub Harrild And Sons.
 
Again according to Wikipedia, 'Harrild & Sons Limited manufactured and marketed composition roller printing presses, paragon platen printing presses (Columbian, Albion and Jobbing presses), types, paper ruling machines, trimming machines, newspaper folding machines and other items connected with printing machinery.'
 
I'm not sure when these works on Stamford St were set up, or if they were built for the company, (though a short history of the company was printed in 1949 but I've not seen a copy) but the firm closed in 1956, 25 years before I took this picture.