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Stop press: memorabilia on display
HISTORIC memorabilia about the Whitby Gazette is on display in a village pub by a member of a family that had close associations with the paper for many years.
John Wood, landlord of The Stiddy in Lythe, worked as a printer for the Whitby Gazette between 1968 and 1978.
He said: “I have photographs and other memorabilia of the Whitby Gazette going back to the 1940s and 1950s including a photograph of a Wayzegoose, the annual printers’ outing.
“My granddad was Alec Wood who worked as a printer for about 40 years and my cousin is Don Wood who was with the Gazette for 50 years.
“I started at the Gazette when I was aged 15 straight from school but I also went to college on block release to train in design and printing.
“Later, I set up the Abbey Press with the late John Cowens who had also worked for the Gazette.
“But when computers came in people could do their own printing and there was no call for small printing firms like ours.
“Even though I’m now a pub landlord I’m still a printer at heart – once a printer, always a printer.”
Don Wood, former deputy editor of the Whitby Gazette added to the family’s story.
He said: “My dad Tom was a printer at the Gazette all his working life apart from his Army service during the war and I followed him into printing but later moved onto the editorial side.”
Don recalled Tom Barker who was an editor of the Gazette, his brother Bill who worked on the managerial side and another family member Malcolm, who later became editor of the Yorkshire Evening Post.
From its beginning in 1854 the Gazette was owned by several generations of the Horne family, well-known in Whitby.
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Weather for Whitby
Sunday 05 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 1 C to 6 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: West
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Sunny spells
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