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Only a bomb could stop the Echo…

One hundred and ten years ago this week the first edition of the Lincolnshire Echo was published.

It looked completely different to today’s Echo. It was a large broadsheet format, with just four pages – and the front page consisted mostly of advertisements.

It continued in that format for almost 100 years until 1991, when the newspaper converted to the more compact tabloid format, under the then editorship of Cliff Smith.

In 1943, an article gave a potted history of the newspaper, the first evening newspaper to be published in the county.

It said the founding of the Echo was something of a gamble, as prior to its production, no one risked establishing an evening paper in so sparsely a populated rural county as Lincolnshire and a previous attempt to produce a daily paper in Lincoln, the Lincoln Journal, failed 30 years previously.

Two young men, William Cottam and Samuel Burrows were employed on a Lancashire newspaper and almost made their mind up to start an evening paper in Lincoln in 1883, but after meeting a number of local prominent citizens, decided to hold fire for a while.

Ten years later and with the necessary financial backing, they began publication from premises near to the Midland railway yard.

At the end of the first year of publication the directors of the company were Mr Joseph Ruston, Mr Alfred Shuttleworth, Mr J T Tweed, Col E S Mason and Mr R A Stephen, with Mr Cottam and Mr Burrows as managing directors.

In 1896, the Lincoln Gazette, an established weekly paper, was bought and the Echo moved to St Benedict Square, where it was published until the move to new premises in Brayford Wharf East, in 1984.

Only once did printing occur at a different place, when a nearby-unexploded bomb, in the Second World War caused the presses to cease and printing to be carried out at the Lincolnshire Chronicle works for a few days.

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