A Brief History of the Sun Engraving Co. Ltd.

Ernest Corp

Note: Ernest Corp joined Sun Engraving as Chief Accountant in 1933. He wrote the following history in retrospect, completing it in 1969, or a short time thereafter; it was kindly made available to us by his sons Edward, John, and Lester, to whom we are most grateful. The brief history (a typed ms) and accompanying notes (some typed, mainly handwritten) are presented in their entirety as received, and are particularly interesting because the ‘slant’ is often from a financial point of view. We have corrected Ernest Corp’s material for spelling and punctuation, and have inserted missing information where possible. Footnotes appear at the bottom of the web page.

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Ernest Corp’s typewritten manuscript

David Greenhill was a practical printer, a machine minder by trade. He had had a chequered career and was then manager of the process engraving and printing works of Cassells at Bushey. Cassells had been a great printing and publishing empire in their day, with successful magazines and general book publishing. Sir Arthur Spurgeon had successfully led them but was now getting old. Declining prosperity led to a break-up of the empire. The magazines were bought by the Berry Bros. (W.E. & S.G. Berry¹) as the foundation of their Amalgamated Press business. One editor, Bernard E. Jones, was given his magazine Amateur Wireless to run himself, which he did very successfully for a number of years, after which there was a sad story which I shall tell in due course.² (I must check where Theo Stephens came in with his Pig Breeder and other country papers.)

Edward Hunter was a close friend of the Berrys and their friend Edward Iliffe – he had given them financial support when they were starting up on their own, and he now secured the printing of their expanding magazines in their Amalgamated Press business.

David Greenhill was in touch with Edward Weldon and printing his fashion magazines, and the Hunters subsequently acquired a capital stake in whole or in part with D.G. West on the Board – ultimately to sell their holdings to Camrose’s Amalgamated Press.

A group of trade magazines run by William T .Wallace and A.A. Marti also began to provide additional printing and, after some fluctuations in prosperity, came to be part of George Newnes. It was obvious that much additional printing was coming their way and it was necessary to find a printing works which could be expanded and to which the existing works at Bushey & Raynes Park could be transferred.

The works of the Menpes Printing Co. at Whippendell Rd., Watford, with plenty, as it then seemed, of open land for development were purchased from Debenham & Co. Ltd., the London store. Many years later G.M. Wright (then joint Managing Director of Debenhams with Sir F. Richmond) told me that as a young accountant he went to Watford once a month, staying at the Rose and Crown, to do the accounts.

In the middle of all these plans and the financial arrangements to support them, the [First World] war loomed nearer and the Midland Bank withdrew their support. I have a vivid picture in my mind³ of E.W.H. coming out of the Bank in Chancery Lane and walking down to Fleet Street. He remembered that his brother-in-law Charles Soames had recommended Goslings Bank, now [1969?] part of Barclays Bank at 19 Fleet Street, probably through his association with the Times who banked there. Whether or not he walked straight in, or did so later after consulting Charles Soames, I do not know, but he got Barclays support and the finance he needed for his purchases. This support, and a close personal relationship with a succession of managers and their staff, continued until 1966 on the printing side, and may still [have] continue[d] on the engraving side since 1968, under its new owners.

With the acquisition of Andre Sleigh & Anglo Ltd. and the purchase of a factory in Lower Marsh Lambeth, development was in abeyance for the duration of the War years.

After the war, the printing plant at Watford grew through the 1920s on a letterpress basis, but with a growing gravure department [that was] building up on the rotary principle. The Weldon magazines were printed gravure and pioneered such use of the new process, but the big breakthrough came with the 7-year contract with J.S. Elias (later Lord Southwood) of Odhams Press. General interest magazines like Passing Show, and fan papers for the growing cinemas like Film Pictorial now could offer colour of a quality and at a price never before achieved. The ability to undertake this output was based on decisions of Edward Hunter’s for expansion during the 1929/31 slump, when the business was suffering as many others, but it laid the basis for the successful expansion of the 1930s.

With this gravure work, there was a continuing expansion throughout the 1930s and up to the start of the [Second World] war. New composing rooms, new warehouses and despatch bays served a constantly growing machine room which also required services new to printing, laboratories, ink works, spirit storage, mixing and recovery plants, large boilers for process-steam required and engineering shops for repairs and maintenance.

In the early 30s rotary letterpress magazine printing was also undertaken, but David Greenhill aimed to show that gravure could give a timetable equal to letterpress for topical news with greatly improved quality of illustration, and Malcolm Messer⁴ producing Farmers Weekly for Beaverbrook was persuaded to adopt gravure. Today [1968?] it is still printed gravure but no successful other weekly newspaper ever adopted this process, except Nursing Mirror for a short time under Hultons.

The new process now being used on such a scale was creating its own market but it was also creating competition in existing markets with old-established houses like Waterlows and Harrisons [who were] already using gravure for mail-order catalogues, other catalogue and brochure, holiday travel and seed/flower catalogue work. Rembrandt Photogravure Ltd. of Upper Norwood, financed by Storey Bros. of Lancaster back to the early years of the century, had used the ideas of the Czech Karl Klic to develop gravure for fine-art purposes in sepia before the First World War. An enthusiastic but unbusinesslike printer called L.T.A. Robinson was incurring substantial losses by selling uneconomically. The Storeys were getting tired of losses, and 50% of the equity was acquired by Sun Engraving in 1932. In 1934 the old North’s Speedometer factory in Whippendell Road, Watford was bought jointly by the Storey family and the Hunters and in July the Norwood factory was closed and Rembrandt brought to Watford. The sales staff headed by the two Bells, with W.J. Tinjay and others, were already installed at Drury House, Drury Lane, and Gordon Greenhill, D.G.’s nephew, was made Managing Director. L.T.A. Robinson was able to start a new works with the support of Ward Lock & Co. in South London, this time carrying his own name.

A new Managing Director of George Newnes Ltd. called Herbert Tingay began to make his mark about this time. He initiated Woman's Own which was to become the second of the two leaders in the womens’ field at their peak. A number of other weeklies and monthlies were started and there was a suggestion that the Rembrandt factory might be developed as a joint interest.

H[azell] W[atson] & V[iney] Ltd. came in closely for the first time at this stage. George Newnes and H.W. & V. Ltd. had exchanged share-holdings in recognition of a mutual interest when the late Lord Riddell’s shares in Newnes were on the market. The magazines then published by Newnes and their associates were largely printed by Hazells at Aylesbury, and it was thought that a dual or possibly tripartite gravure development on the basis of Rembrandt at its factory might be of advantage to the partners.

Nothing came of this idea but the Rembrandt factory did take two or three of the Newnes letterpress machines from Exmoor Street, on which Radio Times had been printed before they lost the contract to Waterlows. Work for these machines was intermittent and at least one of them caught fire and was burnt out together with the factory bay in which it stood.

It was to be the end of the war before the Newnes interest finally played a crucial part in bringing about⁵ the merger of the Sun printing business with H.W. &. V. Ltd.

The year ended 31st March, 1937, was the most prosperous the Sun Engraving Co. Ltd. had ever experienced with work for Odhams, Newnes, Weldons and A.P. running at greater levels than ever.

But this same year brought a crisis as Lord Southwood indicated that he would not renew the Odhams contract on the same basis, but would either take over Sun, or start his own gravure printing works in Watford.

So confident were the directors, however, of their expanding market, that they initiated the largest factory extension to that date, and bought in Germany two of the largest presses bought to that date, [including] the original Vomag with two letterpress cylinders, so that gravure and letterpress could run together without the need for rereeling, and be folded and stitched into one magazine.

There were two opportunities they were taking to enable them to plan to use such greatly enlarged capacity. The first was the combination of circumstances which led to the creation of Hulton Press Ltd. Sir Edward Hulton was the youngish son of the second wife of the original Sir Edward Hulton who had created Allied Newspapers in Manchester. The father had sold out earlier in the decade to the Berrys (Camrose & Kemsley as they became) and the younger Sir Edward was a wealthy man, with an ambition to go back into the industry of publishing in which his father had been so successful. His financial adviser was a J.W.A. Dickinson and the managing director of Beaverbrook’s Farmer’s Weekly was Max Raison. Beaverbrook and his assistant, Brigadier Michael Wardell, were tired of the paper which had been started to support a Beaverbrook crusade and told Raison he could have it if someone would buy it. Raison was in touch with Stefan Lorant, a refugee from Central Europe who was creating a market for illustrated magazines with a technique of [blank here of one or two words’ width] position and contract that became famous through a magazine called Lilliput – then printed by H.W. & V. Ltd. Together with David Greenhill, who had his Odhams work to replace, and W.E. Dedrick of Townshend Hook, who had developed special papers suitable for gravure printing and wished to maintain outlets, the weekly picture paper, Picture Post, was conceived and produced.

September 1938, Munich week. Odhams printing on their own presses in North Watford, the [Sun’s] North West extension not completed and half the second Vomag still in Bremen harbour, but in three weeks the circulation of Picture Post, hoped for at 500,000, had reached 1.75 million – creating the first million-circulation weekly in this country, and presenting Odhams with a situation they could only match by merging their Passing Show and Weekly Illustrated to create another million-circulation weekly.

The second opportunity they [Sun] were seizing was the closing by W.H. Smith of their letterpress printing works in Lambeth, which had printed a popular weekly called Everybody’s and a high-class monthly called Vogue, [amongst others]. Both these magazines had been secured for Watford, Everybody’s to go gravure with letterpress sections on the new Vomags, Vogue to be printed in letterpress to the exceptionally high quality that the Swiss blocks printed⁶ by the Sun could achieve.

Munich postponed worse trouble for a year, the [rest of the second] Vomag arrived, and the Sun – with strengthened management and enlarged production facilities – survived the loss of its largest customer, to emerge greater and more profitable than ever before, when war interrupted the whole development and deviated the staff and facilities into other activities until peace and normal peacetime activities could be resumed.

By 1944, the post-war scene would be anticipated. The Hunters and Greenhill had no obvious succession in management in their own families and were anxious to secure for their daughters and families generally the wealth which they felt would be at too much risk in industry after the war, with the depressions that previous wars had made them anticipate. The management succession was a concern of their major customers, particularly of George Newnes who took a leading part in stimulating the sale of the printing business (with its contracts) to H.W. & V. Ltd. It was said by the families that they could have obtained more cash by a sale to a “soulless public corporation” – Amalgamated Press and, possibly, Odhams, were contenders in that category – and certainly the sale to H.W. & V. Ltd. did preserve for nearly 20 years an association with an old-established family business with tradition and attitudes that preserved intact the feeling of the family that had been so conspicuous a feature of the Greenhill & Hunter management.

On the 22nd March 1945 the first steps towards the sale of the printing business were concluded. The assets of The Sun Engraving Co. Ltd. [were] divided into those attributable to the printing business and those to the engraving business which also included miscellaneous properties and investments. The Ordinary shares were divided into two classes to each of which was attached its appropriate share of assets, to “P” Ordinary Shares the assets of the printing business, to “E” Ordinary Shares the engraving business and its assets.

H.W & V. Ltd. had created a wholly owned subsidiary called Sun Printers Ltd., and this company now bought the whole of the “P” ordinary shares of the S.E. Co. Ltd. for preference shares and cash. This transaction made the whole S.E. Co. Ltd. technically a subsidiary of H.W. & V. Ltd., which had taxation advantages in that S.E. Co. Ltd. ceased to be a “sur-tax directed private company.” It was intended that the management of the printing business should remain with E.W.H and D.G. for three years and T.R. Walker & J. Gunn were assigned by H.W. & V. Ltd. to act with them. D.G.’s health however began to deteriorate with the cancer that finally killed him on 5th June 1947. Colonel Viney, in particular, became concerned at the position and initiated a speeding up of procedure so that on lst May 1947 the final split-up of the business and liquidation of the old S.E. Co. Ltd. was put in hand, Sun Printers Ltd. became an operating and trading company from that date (by receiving the assets of the printing business for its “P” ordinary shares), and a new S.E. Co. Ltd. was formed to acquire the remaining assets representing the “E” shares.

The further history of Sun Printers Ltd. lies with its association in H.W. & V. Ltd. [and] Hazell Sun Ltd. but the new S.E. Co. Ltd. continued under the control and ownership of the Hunter families until August 15th 1968. On the principle that only those families operating in the business should have ordinary shares, the Hugh Hunter and Greenhill families did not participate in the equity of the new company. Edward [and] Noel Hunter, with Noel’s son Tony, managed the business, and in later years some of the chief executives were put on the Board as well.

[S.E. Co. Ltd.] continued successfully through the 1950s and continued to show many signs of the technical competence and commercial ability of the pre-war years. The true profits of their business in typesetting and stereo- and electrotyping, however, were always inflated by their investment income and rent⁷ free owned properties, particularly the arrangement by which they occupied premises at Watford in what had become Sun Printers factory at a peppercorn rent as part of the terms of the sale.

An enquiry under the Restrictive Trade Practices Act resulted in the block and stereo industries losing their price maintenance scheme under which their relative efficiency had made them profitable above the average. Price cutting began to cut into their profits. After Noel Hunter’s death, and the great age of Edward Hunter making him unfit for business (though he continued to go to his office almost to the day of his death), Tony Hunter was joined by Brigadier Christopher Bright, the husband of Edward Hunter’s second daughter, Janie. Between them they planned a new, more efficient, better-equipped and accessible Milford House, in Kirby St., Hatton Garden, on sites formerly occupied by H.W. & V. Ltd. factory and office in Hatton Garden. The old Milford House in Milford Lane was sold to Bernard Sunley, the lease of the premises at Watford was sold to Sun Printers Ltd. and the funds so raised were invested in building and equipping the new factory.

At the end of 1962, they moved from Milford Lane to Kirby St. and also closed Watford. They retained an offset plate studio and factory at Ruislip which they had developed from an original start in this field of operation at Uxbridge. With trade difficult and profit low the locking up of so much capital in fixed equipment and buildings soon made working capital short, and recourse⁸ was had to the Bank. Initiated at last by Tony Hunter, a scheme of arrangement distributed to their shareholders the portfolio of investments surplus to the requirements of the engraving business, and so preserved assets for the shareholders which could have prolonged the family business and been lost before the inevitable end.

Edward Hunter died in June 1965, Tony Hunter died in June 1967 and on 15th August 1968, the ordinary share capital, held mainly by trustees for Tony Hunter’s estate and for the grandchildren of Edward Hunter, was sold to Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press for no more than asset value. Maxwell had acquired C. & E. Layton, the largest trade typesetters in London, and having taken a Sun reduced just before his purchase to less than one third of its staff, could move Laytons into Sun’s new buildings and, using his publishing interests to secure a steady flow of work, turn “Layton-Sun Service” into a profitable organisation. Maxwells’ own initiative over-reached itself, and in 1969 he was removed from Pergamon Press, so that whoever ultimately proves to own Pergamon will also own all that is left of the engraving side of the Sun Engraving Co’s business – 1898–1968. 70 years of initiative dominated in this non-printing area by Edward Hunter and his brother Noel and nephew Tony. Sic transit gloria mundi.

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Ernest Corp’s accompanying notes

THE SUN ENGRAVING COMPANY LIMITED

Annual Sequence of Important Events during my association

1933

Joined 3rd January as Secretary & Chief Accountant.

Engaged Miss Bailey to assist me.

Had Miss Ballard as my Secretary.

In May engaged in one week Miss Stray and Miss Clay.

Weekly payment of wages – at Milford House –

Process & Foundry.

at 13, Milford House, Artists on top floor.

Sales, T.S. Barker, R. Croxton & Miss Craddock on 1st.

Estimating – Walter Brown

Napier, Prince, Cotton &

on second f1oor.

With Miss Stone who had come from Edson (Printers) at 8/9 Essex Street, and Miss Burkitt at Drury House – Comps under Micky Burland.

Monthly cheque from Odhams major cash event.

Daily return to E.W.H. of receipts (in detail) payments and balance.

Weekly wages to G.N.H. for Milford House (for his weekly ratio with sale)

from Drury House to M. Lock for D.G. with productive and non-productive hours.

Drury House contained also Rembrandt Sales staff under younger Bell with J. Tingay and some others for whom Marmaduke Lock (above) was estimator.

Summer holiday in Switzerland with P.D. Lace, Kandersteg & Zermatt.

1934

E.W.H. & D.G. in India - See D.G. Book

Telephone call to G.N.H. and J.A.H. re purchase of another factory at Watford, for Rembrandt – agreed to buy from Receiver Mr. Alfred Herbert re North’s Speedometer Works for £19,000, half to be taken up by the Storey interests – which proved to be C.B.S. Storey personally, not the Company.

Arrangements then made for Rembrandt (in which 50% of the equity had been acquired in 1932) to be moved from Norwood that summer. Gordon Greenhill was made Managing Director. My brother A.J. Corp joined (from F.W. & H. where he had been since I joined Sun) as Secretary and Chief Accountant in August. This went on until 1940 when the Rembrandt were disbanded and never set up again. After the war, the factory was run until 1961 as a section of Sun Printers.

George Haylock joined as Accountant & Miss Bailey went.

First Cornish holiday.

1935

Just hard work.

I think the reconstruction of Milford House must have been done this year.

We owned 1, 2 & 3 Little Essex Street which were 18th Century houses, let as offices and builders’ premises. I remember seeing G.K. Chesterton several times going into one of them where he and Belloc ran a paper called The Distributist. We also owned 7, Essex Street (18th Century) let to Thornton the patent agent, and 8/9 Essex Street, a 90’s-ish block of small offices, let off to people like Edson Printers Ltd. and a solicitor called W.H. Elwes [whom] we used for debt collecting. He wore a monocle and was the last of his line, and clearly in decline, though at Hemel Hempstead where he lived, no doubt still a figure.

Anyway George Knight planned the replacement of 1, 2 & 3 Little Essex St. with a multi-storey steel framed building, connecting with Milford House at all floor levels and with 8/9 Essex Street at upper levels where we were beginning to expand. He also put an extra storey on Milford House itself after a great struggle with ancient rights and much reference to title deeds and the London Building Act 1894. It was agreed with a set-back.⁹ Still perpetuated in the building that has now taken the place of the old one (for Bernard Sunley by George Knight).

In the course of this I got a new office where Oliver and the telephones used to be, and the Counting house got a refit (by Sankey Sheldon) and a door with the name on it. Much more room was created, and the Comps. came back from Drury House to the new top floor and a new overseer W. Mace, and Micky Burland went back to Watford.

2nd. Cornish Holiday

1936

Growth and development at Watford. It was probably this year that the [?] multi-storey building by the railway was completed. If so then we had a board meeting in July on the top floor, followed by lunch at which the famous Symmons raspberries were served. I vaguely feel Mrs Symmons served – but it could still have been Mrs Andrews. Sir Arthur Spurgeon came to his last meeting there, and I was asked by E.W.H. to see him safely on to the train at Charing Cross. I remember him criticising publishing standards as we travelled back by car. We never saw him again.

Noel Hunter voiced at this meeting a criticism of the degree to which the company was becoming dependent on the big printing contracts with publishers.

All this could have been 1935. Certainly, Watford was going all out on production & 9 m[on]ths of that most successful year to 31.3.37.

The formal opening of the new Milford House with four days of buffet lunches & tea parties took place this spring or early summer. I met the first Mrs George Knight at one tea party, and there are pictures of the overalled Milford House young ladies who hostessed these occasions.

Russian Holiday

1937

The new extension at Watford: the Northwest extension for the comps & new Vomag machines got under way this summer & autumn. Changes to meet the impending loss of the Odhams work were under discussion & I saw E.W.H. come back into Milford House with hunched shoulders, knowing that he had turned down Elias¹⁰ & that a new factory would go up in Watford. It was during this year that I remember saying to D.G. that although we were losing our largest customer (Odhams) he was talking as if we were going to be bigger than ever. “We are, me boy,” he said, “we are.” This year or 1936 the new boardroom at Watford was designed and furnished by Eileen Hunter.

Marriage and European Honeymoon

1938

The year when Odhams work went, and at the end of September there was the start and quick success of Picture Post. Completion of the north-west extension, and the acquisition of the “Ladder Works” across the road for a new canteen, letterpress machine rooms, offices. I think a directors’ dining room only opened for one day a week, whilst there was a managers’ dining room started on the first floor in the old building, which went on until at least 1948, as I remember T.R.W[alker] dining there.

Some time [in] the winter of 1937/8 we held the first successful Criterion Dinner &Dance

Third Cornish Holiday

1939

The year the war started & the accounts dept moved to Watford – on Sept 3rd – & the printing section, for which I retained George Haylock &Miss Stray, never returned.

Some time in the winter of 1938/9 we held the second successful Criterion Dinner &Dance.

Start of the phony war period when for two or three months we lived at Watford in my brother Bertie’s house, &George Haylock lived there too during the week. The Strays moved to Kings Langley to be near the works for Lilian. Gordon Greenhill’s children went to Langford to live with the Frosts.¹¹

No holiday as war started

1940

War collapse and start of blitz – travel between London and Watford.

The year ended with me working at Milford House – on the morning of 29th Dec. Dick Lake called on me in naval uniform & that night the first big fire raid on London.

No holiday

1941

War – gradual lifting of the blitz

April 16/17 – the night when Surrey Engineering & [?] Joyner in Hatton Garden went up – & John Jaques went to Thornton Heath.

May 10/11 the night St Clement Danes & 13 Milford Lane went up – with a lot more of London including La Belle Sauvage.

War work getting under way – engineering under Berry and Gordon Greenhill – [?] work to which Leo Francis was seconded. [P]robably this year De la Rue moved into letterpress room after their blitz in London. Certainly much of Sun and all Rembrandt was let out to evacuated firms on war work while tenants like Newnes, Weldons, &Dennison Crepe Paper Co also went over to war work

Holiday with Philip Lace at Halford Glen, Quantocks

1942

This was the year that D.G. persuaded Edward Hunter to let me be associated with James Cawdell &Co. Ltd, Watford ideal Homes Ltd., David Scott (Builders) Ltd., [------ -------?], in fact all the companies with which Bob Willis was associated as Secretary, as he went off to the war – which took him to Iceland.

The strain of these years led to me breaking out in boils, and [--------?] recommended a holiday at the White Friars Hotel at Horsham Street near Hurstmonceaux in East Sussex. Thus we had the first two weeks in December – & brought back memories of the ex-Indian judge who translated Greek plays while he washed up, & I read Horace for the first time, whilst the Reverend Doctor Courtney Bruce enlivened the local bus rides.

Holiday at Langford and Somerset generally

first return visit to Lovington

1943

A quiet war year – Mrs Strickland died. John was born. Much travelling between London &Watford – visits to [------?] & active use of Cawdells & getting on with Robin Mugford.

1944

Start of flying bombs – invasion of Europe

Much figuring with E.W.H.’s Jack Williams which proved to be towards the Hazell takeover – on which of course D.G. kept me informed!

I bought 354 Finchley Road in June – with no windows or doors! – moving in finally in October to a winter of V2s.

1945

March 22nd. 1945 Deal with Hazells.

May 8th – V.E. day

August ? – V.J. day.

gradual return to something normal

Holiday at Woolacombe

1946

Agreed (with Edward Hunter’s support and against Noel’s wishes) to join Hazells. This was agreed in the summer & I was to join Hazells in Sept. 1947 – met R.C.H.¹² &Charles Mills at Aylesbury for lunch. In the end as R.C.H. sacked Jefferies I joined them at the end of January 1947 – which was as well as Col. Viney urged the split-up of the businesses which we did on May 1st 1947

1947

Until 1964/5 the most intensive working year of my life. Joining Hazells on January 30th, we split up the businesses from 1st May 1947. D.G. died on June 5th. I split my time between Milford Lane, Long Acre¹³ &Watford with occasional visits to Aylesbury. Proved D.G.’s will early in August – just before Crowle-Smith’s who also died on June 5th!

Arthur Grey was settling into Milford House – I suppose Kay Ballard was still there – working for Noel, & little Blackie working for Arthur and me. Anyway, I engaged Olive Mitchell to work for me from Sept which started 5 successful years of association.

At Long Acre Mrs Olney [?] was still working for R.C.H. although later Leila Benson [?] came up from Watford to do so. Victor Nott had staff change – but it was on the whole a very happy family unit I found at Long Acre to take the place of what I had at Milford Lane.

1948

Continued working at Long Acre &Watford, and gradually ceased to go to Milford Lane.

Swedish Holiday in September

1949

Hazells interests developing – about now the first transfer of Walter Hazell &Sons Ltd to [-------?] which was not successful and I took it back.

In April I went to Nairobi & got to know Raymond Hazell as well as some Hazell Viney politics.

Rhine Holiday

1950

Ralph Hazell resigned as Chairman. Colonel Viney took over.

First Motoring Holiday in France.

1951

Second Motoring Holiday in France.

1952

This year on August 8th I buried the old Sun Engraving Coy, &something of myself with it.

Third Motoring Holiday in France.

1953

The year Olive Mitchell left me for 6 mths I shared Nora Sargood with Oscar Viney! There was also trouble over a Chief Accountant, which resolved itself into John Doughty from Oct. 1st. Reg Walker was left as I went on holiday to chose between 2 applicants selected by me from a list provided by Edgar Norman, & I came back to find Miss Brannagan starting on Oct. 1st.

I also got consents to handing over both Easeway Trust Ltd and Walter Hazell &Sons Ltd to [-----?] Paton & his firm [------ -------?] & Hardy as it then was.

Fourth Motoring Holiday in France, & on to Spain.

1954

Fifth Motoring Holiday in France.

1955

The year we created Hazell Sun Ltd by changing the name of H.W.&V. Ltd and hiving off that business to a new company with that name.

Holiday in Paris, Rome, Athens, Crete.

[10-yr gap in ms here]

1966

1967

1968

August 15th – sale of what was left of Sun Engraving Co Ltd to Maxwell’s Pergamon Press, where it was joined with C. & E. Layton already owned by him & now moved into Milford House, Kirby Street to form Layton-Sun Service. And so it all ended, including my association in friendship with the family. As I finished my short history of The Sun Engraving Co Ltd – Sic transit gloria mundi!

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Epilogue Ernest Corp retired at 65 in 1970 from the post of Company Secretary of the British Printing Corporation Ltd, the name that Hazell Sun Ltd acquired following its merger in 1963 with Purnell, of Paulton, Somerset.

footnotes

¹ W.E. Berry became Lord Camrose and his brother became Lord Kemsley

² He doesn’t.

³ He must have been told this story by Edward Hunter or Charles Soames

⁴ Editor of Farmers Weekly

⁵ This word appears in the manuscript as ‘fringing.’

⁶ Can anyone tell us what a ‘Swiss’ block was?

⁷ This word appears in the manuscript as ‘sent.’

⁸ There is an intentional blank here in the typescript, but ‘recourse’ seems the obvious word.

⁹ Presumably to help meet conditions imposed by building regulations

¹⁰Lord Southwood

¹¹The Frosts were related by marriage to Ernest Corp’s brother Frederick

¹²Ralph C. Hazell, then Chairman

¹³The head office of Hazell Watson &Viney Ltd.