NEW AUGUST 2021.  If you enjoy old newspapers, you should like this.

The Beccles and Bungay Weekly News was published by Mr Read Crisp, from his bookselling and stationery establishment at the New Market Place in Beccles. It was printed in the town in Hungate Lane. The agent for Bungay and its environs was Mr Carley of Earsham Street.

The paper itself consisted of a single huge sheet, folded to make a four-page edition. Even when folded like that, each page was still large, measuring about seventeen inches wide and a rather unmanageable twenty-three inches in height. It cost one penny.

In the usual fashion of the time, the front page was devoted to advertisements. Local news was confined to page 4, the back page.

This is the issue for Tuesday 9 August 1859. The Waveney Valley line would not be connecting Beccles to Bungay for another four years. The East Suffolk line joining Ipswich to Yarmouth South Town had opened through Beccles about two months before, however, and it contains a reader’s letter complimenting the East Suffolk Railway on its timekeeping but complaining of the high fares they had chosen to charge, which he compared very unfavourably to the costs for similar distances on other lines.

Somerleyton Hall gets a mention, as Sir Morton Peto showed his benevolent concern for the region. The Congregational Church at Lowestoft wanted to hold a bazaar to clear the outstanding mortgage on its buildings, and he threw open his park and gardens for the purpose. There is quite a detailed description of the grounds and the house.

The front and back pages are both presented here complete, so you can zoom in on any part of them you wish.

The contents of the two inside pages are very different, however. They deal with national and international news to an extent which might seem surprising for such a very local paper. Presumably, though, most of the folks of the two towns could not afford a daily paper from London, so in the absence of TV and radio this would be their sole source of such information. Where Mr Crisp acquired it from is unclear. Perhaps he did take a London daily, and was just summarising that, but it does include an editorial column credited to ‘Our London Correspondent’!   ...for the Beccles and Bungay Weekly News?

Rather than scan the whole of these two vast pages, a selection of short extracts from them has been compiled. It includes an account of a man from Bradford who tried one of those new-fangled train excursions to Liverpool and very much wished he hadn’t. A telegraph line from Denmark had just been brought ashore at Weybourne, and there is an account of a railway accident in Italy which someone seems to have relished writing. There is also a statement attributed to a Mr Tite (surely the ECR one?) about air conditioning, which brings to mind the comical account in File RH024 of how the Houses of Parliament tried to keep their committee rooms bearable in summer – by throwing buckets of water over the roof.

The file will be available to download as soon as payment has been made. You go to your account and click on ‘Downloads’. New customers create an account as they place their order.