This summer marks the 20th anniversary of the closure of a local newspaper for North Lincolnshire.

The Lincolnshire Times was known to its more senior readers as The ‘Ull Times, as it was printed and published north of the Humber by the Hull Daily Mail.

But it was 20 years ago this summer that staff and former staff from the Lincolnshire and South Humberside Times gathered as the final edition was published, and autographed copies of that last paper for posterity.

It was an old-fashioned broadsheet for generations, serving the population of northern Lincolnshire, offering a wide range of news, sports reports, features, photographs and farming information.

The very last item to go into the paper, on the Thursday afternoon before it went to press, was the list of market prices.

Staff used the Humber Ferry to deliver photographs and the reporters’ typed stories to Hull, in the days before the Humber Bridge, and then again bring back the bundled copies back for distribution to the newsagents.

For the final few years before its closure the paper became tabloid-sized, a move which met resistance in some quarters.

The old Lincolnshire Times building, with gas lighting and coal fires, was demolished in the early 1950s.

The Times itself became a weekly column in the Scunthorpe Telegraph, called Your Times, with news from the town now carried in the Heard on Brigg Streets column.

Staff on the books when it closed included Brigg’s Town Mayor and Consort Penny Smith and Mike Hills, as well as the long-serving photographer Bryan Robins.

Veteran journalist Edward Dodd, who had carried on writing for The Times long after retiring from his post as news editor, was still contributing 20 years ago when the presses rolled for the final time.

The paper closed on economic grounds but its roots could be traced back to 1867.