Fascinating history of our Hove branch

170 Church Road, Hove is the site for our newest branch and we were intrigued to see if there was any history of this architectural Victorian building held publicly. And we struck gold!

 

This building was once home to Emery’s, a printing firm, which produced the Hove Echo, (and later the Hove Gazette). Elmutt Clifton and his brother ran the business in the two communicating shops – Elmutt was responsible for the printing side while brother ran the newsagent’s shop. The printing works were situated on the ground floor where we are now, while the compositing departments were in the upper floors. This was in the days of the old hot-letter press when the setting of individual letters to make a page for printing was a highly skilled art.  

 

We also discovered a little bit of personal back-story for Emery's. Apparently, a young Arthur Henry Collins started work there in 1899; his mother having told the manager she was sure Arthur would be a fine ‘comp’ because he was good at playing the piano. She was right and he became so skilled at his work, he was known as a ‘whip’ in the trade - in other words he could produce twice as much work when compared to a standard worker, as laid down by the trade unions. After six months he could produce 2,100 to 2,200 lines a week. At first Mr Dyer, the foreman, was delighted at his prowess, but then began to worry he would be earning too much money because payment was calculated as to how many lines were produced. Thus Mr Dyer set him to do other tasks (unpaid) but Arthur still managed to keep up his fast rate! Wow, what a wonderful story.

 

In later years, it's documented that Arthur was able to match the speed of a printing machine – that is, he could produce six lines a minute. Arthur worked with two journeymen in a top-floor room with marvellous views over the churchyard to the Downs. Arthur is said to have made one good friend at work; the foreman’s son. Every workday between early April and late September, the two would go straight from work to have a swim in the sea. Quite right, too.

By 1913 the firm was also printing the Hove Gazette. In February of that year, we were sad to uncover that a devestating fire broke out at Emery’s, destroying amongst other things, books belonging to Hove Library (now a Grade II listed building) just a couple of doors up, that had probably been sent there for re-binding. When the premises was rebuilt, it was extended to the East, effectively eliminating its garden. We couldn't find much more information about this event, but how terrible. The Town Hall of course was, then, within view of our building and a fire tore that down in 1966.