1959: View from HMSO Press, Drury Lane

Philip Marriage writes:  I joined HMSO in the press in Drury Lane on Monday 5 January 1959, embarking on a six-year apprenticeship. Most printing was still letterpress hot-metal so like all new apprentice compositors I began in ‘The Stores’ (from whose window this photo was taken). Here I was introduced to some of the components of the printers’ dark arts — quoins, quads, formes, keys, chases, setting sticks, frames, cases, leads, rules, furniture, stones, blocks, slugs, galleys, and initially most tricky of all, learning the difference between typefaces and how to read them upside down and back to front. My equipment comprised a pair of tweezers, bodkin, steel ruler (which I still have and use), Cornerstone setting stick and a box of brass setting rules, the cost of which — at £5 12s 2d represented most of two weeks earnings. Yes two weeks — my first year’s  income was £169, second £221, third £324. A six-year apprenticeship seemed an awfully long learning curve.

(Photo from PM)

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