Taken some years ago this little movie has surfaced thanks to my former colleague Susan Morton, who was fortunately parked in the corner of our open plan office, so she could get it almost all in there. It gives a bit of a flavour of the bustle in the place when it was busy, which was most of the time. I'm not featured here, which is perhaps a blessing, I assume I was out somewhere looking for work. My colleague Andy, who seemed to think that my using the term "work" for what I did is doing some 'heavy lifting' would be more likely to say that my absence was probably due to me going for my afternoon snooze.
Despite a thorough search of my archives and having taken dozens of pictures when at Severnprint, I have hardly any images of the place . I did take some in the machine room but mainly these close up pics of the machines.
This is the ink for one section of the four colour presses, being made ready. These machine could print around 10k sheets and hour and to hear them running was music to everyone's ears. The company employed some highly skilled printers to run these beasts, as well as the skilled staff in finishing these prints: folding, scoring, binding etc, and all this after those clever people in the Mac room had got the files ready and the colour plates made. A straightforward print job could pass through the hands of 8 or 9 people, or more. I think that some of my customers thought that I went back to the factory and did it all myself sometimes.
This stack of paper on the machine ready for the ink.
Not a printer, but the only photo I have of the outside of the factory. This guy is an Olympic Champion of some sort, I think he was a swimmer and a friend of one of the printers. Sadly I forget his name, but I think the medal he is showing is a silver. Behind him the Severnprint logo, designed by my good friend Alan Blethyn and something that was always very visible in Gloucester. Such a good design, I think that's probably worth a gold medal.
Such a shame that the company has now disappeared from the City, but some happy memories of a great place to work. There I go again, 'heavy lifting'.
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