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A century of news captured in 24-page special

A 24-page special has been produced by the Cornish Guardian to mark its 100th anniversary.

The supplement celebrates a century of news, views and pictures from the newspaper, popular with both locals and tourists alike.

It describes how the Cornishman was launched as an eight-page paper on January 18, 1901 by the first editor, Alfred Browning Lyne, who learned his trade at the Cornish and Devon Post.

The first offices were in Bodmin at premises known as Town Mills, facing the road leading to the South Western Railway Station.

The pages were filled with news, views, notices and adverts covering the whole county, and the first front page has been reproduced for the centenary special.

But there were no pictures – the single illustration in that first edition showing the lino-type machine used to produce the paper – and a whole column devoted to explaining how it worked.

And for female readers there were the first two chapters of a short story, with a cliff-hanger ending to ensure the following week’s paper was bought.

The paper didn’t have to wait long for its first big story – it was in the January 25 edition, when it reported the death of Queen Victoria.

  • To mark its first 100 years the Cornish Guardian has set up a centenary appeal fund, for £30,000 of sleep monitoring equipment for children at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Treliske.

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