The Wells Journal is celebrating being 150 years old.
An exact copy of the first edition – which covered Frome, Shepton Mallet, Glastonbury and Axbridge – was printed to mark the milestone, and inside was this statement of aims and policies from the original editor, Samuel Backhouse.

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It is a grateful and pleasing act to greet our supporters, and the public in general, on this first issue of our periodical; and in presenting the first number of the Wells Journal to our subscribers, we beg to thank them for the very kind manner in which they have received the announcement of a Newspaper for the central portion of Somerset, and for their spontaneous offers of support and co-operation. They thus lead us to the agreeable anticipation of permanent success.

We believe we are uttering an opinion widely entertained when we affirm that an influential Journal has long been urgently required and hoped for in this populous and extensive district of the West of England. We aspire to meet and satisfy this want, and in doing so, we shall be carrying through a design which we have contemplated for some years.

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