This week we are delighted to welcome 72,340 brand new pages to The Archive. We have an amazing six brand new titles for England’s biggest county – Yorkshire – covering towns in the north and the west of the county. In addition to this wealth of new Yorkshire content, we have added new titles from Nottinghamshire and Lancashire.

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Heading up our crop of new Yorkshire titles is the Scarborough Gazette. Established in 1844, it sought to be a ‘high class weekly journal,’ and also to offer an ‘unrivalled…guide to the numerous and fashionable Visitors to the Queen of Watering Places.’ Scarborough, nestled beside the North Sea, was and is a popular resort town, and the Scarborough Gazette would publish the names of up to 5,000 of its visitors, all listed under the names of the hotels they were staying at – a fascinating snapshot into the past for researchers. The Scarborough Gazette also contained illustrations, mainly of the resort itself.

Scarborough Gazette | 8 June 1854

We have two further North Yorkshire titles this week, namely the Farmer’s Friend and Freeman’s Journal and the Richmond & Ripon Chronicle. The Farmer’s Friend and Freeman’s Journal was a short-lived York-based title, running for five years between 1850 and 1855. Published weekly on a Friday night, it adopted a protectionist viewpoint and was published by printer Henry Fairburn.

The first edition of the Richmond & Ripon Chronicle appeared rather bombastically on the scene on 23 June 1855. It sort to supply the demand of the age for ‘cheap news,’ and its newspaper ‘will contain all the news of the week, at a price which will bring it within the reach of all.’ Its mission statement goes on to relate how:

Our aim shall be popular without pandering to depraved tastes – to spread knowledge amongst our fellow-men – the knowledge that shall fit them to act as citizens of this great empire – that shall rend them wiser and better. We shall attach ourselves to no party, and by this means we hope to retain the good will of all, and to become what it is our earnest wish to be – a good Family Newspaper.

Richmond & Ripon Chronicle | 28 April 1894

Rounding of our collection of Yorkshire titles this week are three publications from the west of the county. We have two for the historic town of Halifax: the Halifax Express and the Halifax Evening Courier. The Halifax Express, which also covered Huddersfield, Bradford and Wakefield, was established in 1831 and ran to 1841. A weekly title, it supported a political alliance between the Radicals and the Liberal party. A daily title, the Halifax Evening Courier was established in 1892 and we have nearly 30,000 pages for this publication. Our final new Yorkshire title is the Otley News and West Riding Advertiser. Another weekly title, it was discontinued in 1890.

Our two other new titles are Nottinghamshire’s West Bridgford Times & Echo, which was first published in 1929, and Lancashire’s Warrington Observer, a short-lived title which appeared in 1889. We have updates to our existing titles, including new pages for Breconshire’s earliest newspaper, the Brecon County Times, as well as updates to historic Irish title the Sligo Independent. 

On 6 July 1875 Great Britain’s first ever funicular railway was opening in Scarborough, known as the South Cliff Lift. Powered by a hydraulic system, the railway was constructed at the cost of £8,000 and carried two cars with a capacity of 14 each. The Scarborough Gazette, 29 July 1875, carries the below announcement:

The South Cliff Incline Carriage Way, for the conveyance of passengers between the Spa and Sands, and the Top of the South Cliff, is now open to the public, at a charge of one penny each.

Scarborough Gazette | 29 July 1875

Funicular railways were then seen as a more continental method of transport, and as such, the introduction of one to Scarborough was an exotic innovation. More funiculars would follow in the wake of the South Cliff Lift, not just in Scarborough, whilst the South Cliff Lift experienced some dramas of its own.

Scarborough Gazette | 1 September 1892

A report in the Yorkshire Evening Post in 1912 tells of a ‘remarkable accident’ involving the South Cliff Lift. Closed for the winter time, one of the fastenings that ‘secured the car at the top of the tramway to the track suddenly snapped, and the car dashed down the steep incline at a terrific pace and crashed into the buffers at the bottom.’

This resulted in the framework of the car being wrecked, and ‘a port of the bottom platform’ being smashed. Thankfully, two engineers who had just been walking up the tramway, and had just reached the top, narrowly escaped being hit by the runaway car.

Scarborough pictured in 1914 | Graphic | 26 December 1914

New Titles

Updated Titles

This week we have updated three of our existing titles.

You can learn more about each of the titles we add to every week by clicking on their names. On each paper’s title page, you can read a FREE sample issue, learn more about our current holdings, and our plans for digitisation.

You can keep up to date with all the latest additions by visiting the recently added page.  You can even look ahead to see what we’re going to add tomorrow.