I was a little worried on Wednesday morning as there had been a fire at
Archant’s print works where we were going that evening so I dashed off a quick e-mail to Ken Prentice to make sure the trip was still on. Luckily the damage had been light and the tour of Archant’s print works was still on. So about four thirty Diana set off from a cloudy Aldeburgh to go to Norwich which is where Archant’s is located or at least the one we were visiting was anyway. We arrived just before six and found that several of the others were ahead of us. We parked and started the normal process of talking to everyone and anyone present.
Ken arrived and asked us all to move as he wanted to take a picture of all
of us lined up, ‘herring bone’ fashion. This was temporary as large trucks could not get past if we stayed. We were just performing this manoeuvre when a truck arrived! Luckily the driver seemed to be in no great hurry and was happy to wait for us. In fact I am not absolutely sure I did not see a camera in his hand as well. It did not take us long to complete the parking, have our photograph taken and go back to where we were. This all happened with the minimum fuss and many smiles and it occurred to me that the world would be a better place if everyone was like Morgan drivers or does this sound a little self satisfied, maybe but I still think it’s
true. On the grounds that we would all leave together we all parked blocking
each other in and the proceeded to the tour.
The guided tour of the print works was fascinating and took us from the creation of print plates to the printing, folding and collating of the final newspapers. Before that we had a brief talk about how long the works had been there and how the old method of printing, sometime referred as ‘hot metal’ because each letter was individually moulded from molten metal, differed from the new method of printing known as offset litho. The new method enabled the printer to take the layout straight from a computer screen to a series of plates each of which would take a different colour. Ken also told us about the consumable used at the works. Most of these statistics I have now forgotten but twelve tons of ink a week was one. I was staggered.
We were split into three groups for the tour and managed to see the whole process from computer screen, through the plates being produced and the printing, folding, collating and stacking of a newspaper. It was a truly fascinating process. There is something very fascinating watching machinery that has been designed well carry out its job. A bit like a Morgan I guess.
After the tour we thanked our hosts and repaired to the Fur and Feathers,
Woodbastwick and a fine meal was had by all. Unfortunately I was the designated
driver so I could not try their full range of beers but it looked well worth
a return visit.
A huge thank you is owed to Ken Prentice for a fabulous evening.
Maurice's other photographs
