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Printworks
 On the corner of Corporation Street and Withy Grove stands a building that Pevsner describes as a "weakly Baroque Portland stone facade of early 20C newspaper offices and works." The building was once called Kemsley House when the Kemsley Press group owned it.  Kemsley Newspapers Ltd. was a major newspaper group that controlled the Sunday Times, Empire News, the Sunday Graphic and a number of daily and evening provincial newspapers. In 1959, the Canadian, Roy Thomson, bought a controlling interest in Kemsley Newspapers Ltd. The building was then called Thomson House, as you can see below.  The images above and
below are shown here with the permission of David
Dixon
  In more recent years a large sign graced the top of the building declaring that it was Maxwell House, referring to Robert Maxwell the newspaper tycoon rather than the coffee. In 1999 - 2000 RTKL UK Ltd turned the building into an entertainment centre featuring a multiplex cinema, restaurants and bars, boasting 20 venues under one roof.      A remnant
of the former newspaper office is the
fragment of the internal railway and its
turntable that were incorporated into the
new floor.
Two memorials stand by the entrance to the Printworks commemorating the names of the employees of the Kelmsley Press and E. Hulton & Co Ltd (which had been incorporated into the Kelmsley Group) who died in the two World Wars. |
