Arthur Rangely

Kemsley House, Withy Grove, now Printworks - 1929

Rangley is described as an "in-house" architect for the newspaper company that designed and built Kemsley House.  In "Discovering Manchester", by Barry Worthington and Graham Beech, it is described as having been, "... developed piecemeal after 1929 as the largest newspaper office and printworks in Britain, printing such long-forgotten papers as the Sunday Graphic as well as the northern edition of the Daily Telegraph."  The origin of the name Kemsley is that James Gomer Berry, a Welsh newspaper publisher who co-owned The Daily Telegraph with his second brother William and Baron Burnham was elevated to the peerage becoming the 1st Viscount Kemsley.  He founded Kemsley Newspapers, which owned The Sunday Times, The Daily Sketch and The Sunday Graphic amongst its titles.  As the newspaper empire changed hands the building was also known as Thompson House and Maxwell House.  Today, after a £10 Million refurbishment it has been transformed into a "leisure complex".