Still pressing ahead with the best of local news

3:55pm Wednesday 7th May 2008

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MOVING with the Times! That's your favourite newspapers which has been serving generations of readers since the first copy of the Bury Times originally rolled off the presses on July 5, 1855.

The four-page edition sold for a cover price of just one pence.

Although the newspaper and the community it serves has changed dramatically during the intervening 153 years, the ethos has remained the same.

That is to keep our readers fully informed and to reflect and report happenings within the town.

The publication of the first weekly Bury Times was the realisation of a dream for local printer John Heap. The paper started life from offices in the town's Union Square following the abolition of stamp duty.

Mr Heap died in 1887 and the paper was bought from his executors by Mr Arthur Frank Bentley in 1891.

Printed continued at Union Square until a year later when the Bury Times moved into its Cross Street premises, its home for the next 79 years.

The Bentley family ownership ended in 1966 with the death of Mr Horace M Bentley and the business passed into the hands of editor Mr Wilf Ainscow, who joined the Bury Times in 1929, and Mr Harold Tomlinson. They became chairman and managing director respectively.

In 1971, the next big change came when the firm moved lock, stock and barrel into the former Co-op bakery in the town's Market Street. Two years later, in a dramatic technological change, the paper replaced its old and trusted Linotype machines with one of the new photo-typesetting systems.

In 1983, the fiercely-guarded family tradition of the Bury Times came to an end when the paper was acquired by Scottish firm, Johnston Press plc And in 1995, another end of an era was signalled. For the edition of Friday, March 3 marked the last one to be actually printed in Bury and subsequently this was carried out in Chesterfield.

In March, 196 Johnston Press announced an exchange of regional newspaper with the Newsquest Group.

That comprised the £5.75 million sale of three paid for and two free titles embraced within the Bury Times Group.

In June of 2001, the Bury Times transferred into a brand new building just yards from its previous headquarters in Market Street which were later demolished.

The move took the paper well and truly into the new millennium and reinforced our belief to be based in the town which we have served faithfully for the past 153 years.