After the ear­li­est, all-wood­en press­es, the next devel­op­ment was to exploit the bet­ter under­stand­ing of met­al to enhance the print­ing process. A met­al sta­ple had been used in Basle, but it was Earl Stan­hope that cre­at­ed the first all-iron press around 1800. By 1813, the Columbian press had been invent­ed by George Cly­mer of Penn­syl­va­nia and oth­er iron hand press­es fol­lowed¹.

To bring us back to the UK, and the less-well-known, this arti­cle looks at Leeds’ con­tri­bu­tion to the ear­ly iron hand press­es with the Bri­tan­nia press. These are rel­a­tive­ly small in num­ber, with only a hand­ful known to remain.

Benjamin Porter

Ben­jamin Porter was born on 13 April 1791 in Leeds, mar­ried in 1813 and by 1841 was liv­ing in Queen’s Square, Leeds, which, by the way, is still stand­ing and remains gas lit despite the worst of Leeds’ 1970s excess­es with the Mer­rion Cen­tre and the Urban Motor­way.

Porter is list­ed in Leeds news­pa­pers as a ​‘white­smith’, a part­ner to a black­smith but work­ing with white met­als. We might assume that this was akin to a tin­smith.

Porter’s works were in a court­yard — Cross Court — off Brig­gate in Leeds. The 1885 plan below shows Cross Court, but by the time of the plan, Porter’s works had dis­ap­peared.

The Britannia Press

While there is no com­mon­ly accept­ed date for the Bri­tan­nia Press, the ear­li­est ref­er­ence I can find is March 1832 when Porter announces an un-named press of his inven­tion as new.

TO PRINTERS. — B. PORTER, White­smith, Leeds, in call­ing the Atten­tion of the Pro­fes­sion to his New and Improved PRINTING PRESS.

Leeds Intel­li­gencer, 15 March 1832

The press has a name by 1838 with a head­line to Porter’s Bri­tan­nia Press, call­ing out the con­tin­ued improve­ments and ease of use of the press.

The press is described by Reynolds Stone² as “…seems to be based on both the Impe­r­i­al and the Columbian, its action and main form being very sim­i­lar to the Impe­r­i­al but the return of the plat­en being achieved by a coun­ter­weight and the pres­sure adjust­ment by a thread­ed lever.”

Moran describes the appear­ance as being dec­o­rat­ed on the front only, with clawed feet and splayed legs.

What­ev­er may be the respec­tive Mer­its of the Pre­de­ces­sor [ear­li­er para­graph], Ben­jamin Porter, the Inven­tor of the Bri­tan­nia Press, leaves the Pro­fes­sion to draw their on con­clu­sions, but at the same time respect­ful­ly sub­mits that the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of the desir­able qual­i­ties of Ease, Expe­di­tion and Dura­bil­i­ty have been reserved for his Inven­tion.”

Leeds Times, 20 August 1842

Porter’s adverts each invite peo­ple to seek tes­ti­mo­ni­als from the local area of print­ers that are keen to tell oth­ers of the delight of the Bri­tan­nia. The list of users sug­gests that the press stayed ​‘close to home’. Moran said¹ ​‘In his Print­er’s Man­u­al of 1838, C. Tim­per­ley reports that the Bri­tan­nia press was high­ly spo­ken of by many prac­ti­cal print­ers and exten­sive­ly patron­ized in the coun­ties of York and Lan­cast­er’.

The Bri­tan­nia Press is now in Oper­a­tion at the Leeds Intel­li­gencer Office, Leeds Mer­cury Office, Leeds Times Office, Sheffield Iris Office, Sheffield Inde­pen­dent Office, Wake­field Jour­nal Office, Liv­er­pool Times Office, and in the Offices of numer­ous Let­ter-Press Print­ers in York­shire, Lin­colnshire and the neigh­bour­ing Coun­ties.

Leeds Intel­li­gencer, 12 May 1838.

It appears that Ben­jamin died in 1851 but there then is a sig­nif­i­cant delay between this and his son announc­ing that the busi­ness would car­ry on under his name. Curi­ous­ly, it looks like the print­ing machines were the small­er part of the busi­ness also list­ing bell-hang­ing, white­smithing and ​‘gen­er­al smithing’.

Miniature Britannia Presses

While the press­es them­selves are rare, even rar­er still must be the minia­ture Bri­tan­nia Press­es that Porter pre­sent­ed to dif­fer­ent organ­i­sa­tions local­ly.

The Leeds Intel­li­gencer for 06 June 1840 reports that the Hal­i­fax Mechan­ics’ Insti­tu­tion held an exhi­bi­tion for which Porter sup­plied a minia­ture Bri­tan­nia press described as ‘…very beau­ti­ful spec­i­men of work­man­ship”, weigh­ing 28lbs and being 10″ × 14″  capa­ble of print­ing a card of 3¼″ × 4¼″.

Britannia Presses Today

In March 1978 the Print­ing His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety report­ed to know of eight Bri­tan­nia press­es in the North of Eng­land.

Jere­my Winkworth pro­vid­ed a fuller list of known Bri­tan­nia Press­es in the BPS’s Small Print­er mag­a­zine in 2008. The key, pub­lic owned or pub­licly avail­able Bri­tan­nia press­es are —

• Leeds Indus­tri­al Muse­um, at least two press­es
• Sci­ence Muse­um, Lon­don
• John Rylands Library, Man­ches­ter
• Muse­um of Sci­ence and Indus­try, Man­ches­ter
• Wordsworth Trust, Gras­mere
• Craven Muse­um, Skip­ton
• Dundee Con­tem­po­rary Arts, as below
• Leices­ter Print Work­shop
• Scar­bor­ough Tech­ni­cal Col­lege
• In a pri­vate col­lec­tion is Michael Atk­in’s Bri­tan­nia Press at Brack­en Press.

#Tues­day­Tour: This is our well-loved Bri­tan­nia Press, which is the grand old lady of #DCAPrintStu­dio — we have it on good author­i­ty that it is one of the ear­li­est built mod­els (mod­el No 491), which were first man­u­fac­tured by an R Porter of Leeds in pre-1837! pic.twitter.com/PMrnwiHGMu

— DCA (@DCAdundee) April 14, 2020

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References

1. Moran, James, Print­ing Press­es His­to­ry and Devel­op­ment from the 15th Cen­tu­ry to Mod­ern Times.
2. Reynolds Stone, (1967). Print­ing His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety Jour­nal No. 3

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Location

96 Brig­gate, Leeds

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