Continuing our series of stories about our archive of historical newspapers, Beverly Abbs explains an arrangement to preserve our old Berrow's Worcester Journals in the city they have served so long

WHILE we were delighted to be able to hand individual bound volumes from the Worcester News archive to our readers, we were keen that its older stablemate, Berrow's Worcester Journal, should remain as a single collection.

For various reasons that was not possible, but we were able to secure the next-best option, and our newspapers have been passed into the care of just two city institutions.

The county archive service at the Hive library has a set of the earliest Journals from the 18th century, while Worcester Civic Society has been given those from the beginning of the 19th century to the present day.

Deputy editor John Wilson explained: "Berrow's Worcester Journal is the oldest continuously published newspaper in the world. For that reason alone, we felt it important to try to keep the collection in Worcester if we could.

"We are delighted that the Hive and the civic society have enabled that to happen."

The archives at the Hive are being kept in climate-controlled conditions to preserve them, so are not generally open to public inspection.

However, the civic society aims one day to display their volumes so that they can be examined and read by local people.

Berrow's Worcester Journal was first published in 1690, initially appearing as the Worcester Post-man. Its publish, Harvey Berrow, put his own name to the newspaper in 1753 to differentiate it from a rival that had cheekily also begun calling itself the Post-Man.

Berrow's Worcester Journal has been published ever since, and can proudly claim to be the world's oldest continuously published newspaper.

Phil Douce, chairman of Worcester Civic Society, said his most pressing concern initially was to find a place to store the archive.

“We tried places such as the Commandery, the Guildhall and Tudor House museum, but no joy.

"We had a major problem. We were looking at about 30ft of shelving three feet high with another three feet on top.

"Eventually, we found an empty office at A E Clegg's garage in Hallow, and the manager kindly said we could use that until we found somewhere permanent.

Worcester MP Robin Walker is advising the civic society about possible sources of funding for the repair and conservation of the old newspapers.

Mr Douce said: "It is so interesting to look back through these old newspapers. Funnily enough my 18-year-old granddaughter was looking at one of the volumes at Christmas and pointed out something topical – they had a lottery in the 1800s with two first prizes of £30,000. That's one and a half million pounds today!"