St Matthew's Trip to St Brides

On Monday 19th May, Year Six went to Fleet Street to visit St Bride’s Institute to learn about printing. When we got there, we met two men, Bob and Mick. Bob showed us a book printed by William Caxton in 1478. Then we went downstairs to see the workshop.

Mick told us about famous printers such as William Caxton who printed the first book. He also showed us some of the first technology to make newspapers. We saw American, British and German printing presses. They explained to us how printing started. Before the printing press was invented the old monks used to write out Bibles by hand.

In those times you could pay a penny for the illustrations to be professionally coloured but sometimes young children would colour them in.

This is a wooden tablet with a Tibetan prayer written on it. Even today, the monks still use this printing method in Tibet as it is part of their culture.

We learned that in 1712, newspapers were taxed. When they printed newspapers they used metal letters that had to go in backwards so they were the right way round in the papers.

 

Bob showed us the book made by William Caxton. Although it was in a different language, the writing was beautiful. At the start of each paragraph the first letter was printed in red.

  

Newspapers about death and lurid events were printed in a separate newspaper called ‘broad sides’ which had lots of gory news in them. It made us shiver! These days, we call these papers ‘tabloids’. We went on to learn a lot about tabloid newspapers and characters such as Rupert Murdoch.

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