Birth of a Website

I’m not an ex-Sun employee, nor is any member of my own family, but Sun Engraving and Sun Printers became an inextricable part of my life when I married Peter Greenhill. The Sun loomed large in the Greenhill family, as this website shows, and the firms were always mentioned (and mentioned often) with both fondness and respect. The companies’ many achievements over the decades had an epic quality to them, and the Sun seemed a shining example of enterprise at its best.

So I felt an almost visceral shock, over here in Canada, the day I came across a Watford Council News article on the Internet that began with the words: “An eleventh hour deal will see the demolition of a local eyesore – Sun Printers.” The article went on to describe the sorry state of the long-abandoned Sun buildings and the arson and vandalism that regularly occurred there. A number of articles on other websites carried much the same information, expressed in a similar tone. The details they provided helped us to understand the concern and frustration of present-day Watford residents, and the articles were, after all, just reports of current events. Yet how sad it seemed to us that not one of them included so much as a nod to the Sun’s proud past – all the creativity, hard work, and innovation, all the pioneering efforts that had had such a profound influence on gravure printing, all the success over the decades. The Sun’s long and impressive history had been reduced to a single small, inglorious, dismissive word – eyesore.

That word, more than anything else, was what led to the creation of this website in 2005. With your help, we will make certain that the Sun’s story is told and that the firm’s historic name is preserved and honoured as it deserves to be.

Pat Valentine