Bob Shaw is Northampton born and bred. He worked for 40 years as a journalist, mainly with the Chronicle and Echo. He started as an apprentice and worked his way up through junior reporter to become Deputy Editor of Northampton Mercury and Herald. The Northampton Mercury commenced in St.Ives in 1720 as a partnership between a writer and a local businessman (a Chemyst); his Pills and Potions were well advertised in the paper. St Ives was a little off the main track and the Paper soon moved 40 miles to Northampton where it prospered, at least in part due to easy access to the major route: Watling St. Early on it was one of the most widely circulated papers in UK with copies sent to far away places including Reading and Newcastle. Bob took us through the rise and decline of the company. In the early days it was the first paper to use electricity and the first to use linotype machines and then one of the first to produce a paper on the “new” Apple computers. Then the gradual decline of the company, as all local papers struggled to compete with TV and the Internet. There was a gradual reduction in the number of editions from four daily to ultimately becoming a weekly paper. He showed us various premises occupied by the company for many years on the Market Square, then to The Mounts and now to a small part of a modern office development. But, the Paper continues, doing what local papers do best, reporting “hatches, matches and dispatches”! See the British Newspaper Archive