A regional daily newspaper whose current home is set to be bulldozed will move to a new base next week.
The Coventry Telegraph has been based at its Corporation Street headquarters for more than 50 years but will move to new offices next Monday on Leicester Row in the city’s canal basin area – a five minute walk from its current base.
Owners Trinity Mirror are seeking to sell the paper’s existing building for redevelopment, which is likely to be knocked down as part of a comprehensive scheme including shops, offices and a hotel.
The company first submitted a planning application to redevelop the site in 2010, with the document saying that the current premises, which include a disused printing works, were “old, unattractive and in poor condition”.
Deputy editor Andy Mallabone said: “This move heralds an exciting new era for one of the best regional newspapers in the country.
“The Corporation Street building has been a great servant and our new offices will continue to offer all the services readers and customers currently enjoy and expect.”
The paper was founded in 1891 by William Iliffe as the Midland Daily Telegraph, a four-page broadsheet costing a halfpenny.
During the Second World War, the Telegraph’s Hertford Street offices and the Vicar Street printing works were bombed, but the paper never missed a day’s production.
In 1957 work started on a purpose-built headquarters in Corporation Street, with staff relocating in 1959.
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Sad to see the old place go, it once had a bar, pool table and quiet room, the clatter of a hot-metal production room, vacuum tubes, Saturday runners and gaff of the week was blaming the office smoke problem on the editor’s pipe, those were the days.
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More than sad to see the old place go. I had the pleasure of working for the CET (as it was then) when it truly was one of the best regional newspapers with a massive circulation and multi-editions. And I spent many a happy hour in the social club on the top floor! They were exciting days with the printing operation in the basement. Sadly there seems to be little excitement in newspapers these days.
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