Cuttings & clippings

the story of the Oswestry Advertiser

1849-1870

 by Neil Rhodes

As the Oswestry and Border Counties Advertizer celebrates its 160th birthday, this an ideal time to look back at some of the stories and characters that filled those very earliest editions of the newspaper.
To do that would normally mean many painstaking hours of research, reading through dusty old archives or scanning miles of mirofiche records at the town’s library.

It’s a time-consuming and exhausting task… but fortunately a local author has done all that laborious leg-work for us and come up with a splendid new book which picks out all the top news stories, the funny snippets and the local gossip and presents them in an entertaining and easy-to-read style.
Cuttings & Clippings, written by Carreghofa author Neil Rhodes, is the story of the Oswestry Advertizer in its own words from its launch in 1849 up until 1870. Start to dip into it and you’ll be surprised to find so many similarities between now and a century and a half ago. The local concerns are often the same – crime, drinking, the state of the streets – even if some of our attitudes have changed, especially towards the rich and famous.
The Advetizer has a long and auspicious history. It started as little more than a monthly publication of railway times for the town of Oswestry but grew into a large newspaper featuring news from all over Shropshire and North Wales, as well as national items.

The first issue of the OSWESTRY ADVERTISER AND RAILWAY GUIDE (note the s in Advertiser, unlike the present Advertizer with a z) was published on Friday, January 5, 1849. The first issues were published monthly, and consisted of just 10 pages, each page being a mere seven inches by four inches — smaller than a modern paperback!
It was printed at premises on the corner of Albion Hill and Bailey Street (now the Flower Gallery). The owner of the company was Samuel Roberts, though his sons William Whitridge and John Askew were the primary movers in the idea of a newspaper. Askew Roberts eventually became the chief editor.
The railways had a huge importance at the time, and it was no coincidence that the first edition of the OSWESTRY ADVERTISER was published only a few days after the first railway in Oswestry was opened. Railways were opening up the country, allowing speeds of 30mph when stagecoaches averaged only about 7mph. Now it was possible to travel by train to Manchester or Liverpool and the journey to London now only took eight hours, unlike the two or more days by road.
Other big issues of the day included the severity of the anti-poaching laws, which the Advertiser constantly campaigned against, especially as the magistrates were landowners. The newspaper printed many articles calling for an end to drunkenness in the town, to little effect, apparently. And it attempted to see that roads were made with proper surfaces, especially in the poorer parts of the town.
Cuttings & Clippings follows these campaigns and running stories; reproduces reports of court cases – some shocking, some hilarious – and builds a real and colourful picture of what life in the town was like in the middle of the 19th century, how its people behaved and what they worried about.                
Read about Oswestry’s drunken fights on a Saturday night, its crimes, its joys, its characters, its battle for a railway to make it the most important town in the region – and why it was known as the Town of Many Smells.
Through the pages of those very early editions, Cuttings & Clippings brings a sense of how and why Oswestry has grown up to be the bustling market town it is today.
And of course 160 years on, the Advertizer is still here, reporting on all the local news stories and reflecting the views of Oswestry’s people, just as it did then...

Cuttings & clippings, the story of the Oswestry Advertiser in its own words: the beginning, 1849-1870 is available from Neil Rhodes Books, price £8.99 including post & packing
go to: www.neilrhodesbooks.co.uk
or email: nr@neilrhodes.co.uk