Soman-Wherry Press Ltd, Norwich - 1987-1988

A year in Norwich for an industrial placement year (part of a "sandwich" degree course). Norwich was picked for two major reasons: firstly, Nosher had never lived in (or even visited) East Anglia before, and the job was in printing, which seemed to follow on nicely from a couple of years as photographer, sometime printer and general hack on the Plymouth Polytechnic Students' newspaper "Fly". Soman-Wherry Press was at that time part of Maxwell BPCC (the British Printing and Communications Corporation), along with famous names (in printing, at least) such as Odhams-Sun, Thomas Forman, Pulman and Mirror Group Newspapers. Maxwell, before launching himself off the back of the Lady Ghislane in suspicious circumstances, was notorious for allegedly phoning up the switchboard of his companies and firing anyone who answered the phone without the requisite "Maxwell..." salutation.

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These are cropped thumbnails. Click on an image to view the full photograph.

A view outside the Crocodile Building on Heigham Street in Norwich. The building (right) used to be a pub before it became Soman's sales and finance offices. The other side of the road is the factory building, which briefly became an Aspen Windows factory (after Soman's was closed down and the production transferred to BPCC Printec in Diss and Business Magazines in Colchester) before being demolished to make way for a car showroom.

Sue and Rachel "Nobby" Clarke in reception

Sue with her scatty King Charles Spaniel

Colin Tuthill runs around playing footie

The Soman-Wherry Footie team, clockwise: Chris Playford, ?, ?, Kevin "Wideboy" Malloy, Dave Greenbridge, Simon "Burton" Berry, ? and Colin bottom-left

Valerie, Nobby, Jo and Sue in the Dolphin in Norwich

"Wideboy" Molloy and Jo

"Burton" Berry, Colin Tuthill and Don Dawson

In the pre-press area, Bill Butler, MD, presents some retirement gifts to the compositor

At the controls of an ancient Linotype compositing (typesetting) machine

One of the press operatives inspects a reel of paper (some of these relatively small reels, for 8pp-up presses, could weigh over half a tonne)

The guys on the collection-end of an Albert A101, a 4-unit web-offset heatset press. Legend had it that it had part of a Citroen 2cv propshaft in it (or somesuch).

The guy on the end of a Muller-Martini stitching line

Alan Smith, Simon Rigg, Nosher, "Fishy" Herring and Adrian the estimator

"Check-it-out" Baz and Simon Berry at Nosher's workstation

The end of the Roland Favorit sheetfed press

A trip around the paper store...

...and round the pre-press (reprographics) area

The other 8pp press, a Harris

"Check-it-out" Baz does some estimating

Nosher's desk in the Crocodile Building, on the occasion of the 21st birthday. The desk featured a Wang PC and an Opus PC-III, plus, on the wall, a print out of Nosher's huge Multiplan financial model