A Week in 1945 Gallery
This Gallery features advertisements, articles and photographs taken from a copy of Staffordshire Weekly Sentinel which belongs to Mr. Neil Gibson of Harriseahead.
.... and can be viewed by clicking here to open the A Week in 1945 Gallery.
The Staffordshire Weekly Sentinel
This edition of the Staffordshire Weekly Sentinel was published on Saturday the 7th of April 1945 - a six page “buff issue”
The Sentinel During the Second World War.
The outbreak of war was published in a special Sunday edition of the Evening Sentinel on 3 September. The “buff” edition containing early morning racing news which had been published since early in the century was discontinued. Newsprint restrictions reduced the size of the paper by degrees to four pages a night, and these restrictions continued for some time after the end of hostilities. Many members of the Sentinel staff served with the Forces both at home and overseas.
A Short History of the Sentinel Newspaper
The first ever edition of the newspaper - then called the Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial and General Advertiser - hit the streets on January 7, 1854.
Owned by Hugh Roberts, the weekly paper was published in a small printing shop in Cheapside, Hanley, and attracted a circulation of 3,000.
In 1855 the paper was given the mouthful of a title: The Staffordshire Sentinel, Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Midland Counties Advertiser, and Macclesfield Congleton and Leek Express. Sensibly, this was shortened to The Staffordshire Sentinel in 1859.
Nearly 20 years later, on April 15 1873, readers saw the first ever edition of the Staffordshire Daily Sentinel - the first newspaper of its kind in North Staffordshire. The daily consisted of four pages and was sold at half a penny on five days a week at 4pm.
The Staffordshire Daily Sentinel continued alongside the Weekly Sentinel, covering the news in Staffordshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire and Shropshire.
In December 1895, the two sets of proprietors joined forces and it was agreed the newspaper should be conducted as an independent newspaper - as it has continued to this day.
In 1914 on the outbreak of war, The Sentinel stopped its practice of producing the last edition of the paper on green paper.
During the 1926 general strike, The Sentinel ceased publication for several days - later producing a single sheet for emergency editions.
In June 1928, 55 per cent of the company shares were sold to Associated Newspapers’ Northcliffe Publishing Group which is a share-holder in the Local World Group which owns the paper today.
With the outbreak of WWII in 1939 newspaper sales had to be pegged to pre-war circulation figure, which was more than 78,000 copies a night.
In October 15, 1988 the paper’s format changed to tabloid. While many local people still refer to the paper as ‘The Evening Sentinel’, the word ‘Evening’ was dropped from the title during the mid-1990s.
Having moved from Cheapside to Foundry Street in 1939, the presses and staff were all on the move again in 1986 - to the purpose built site in Etruria - the original site of Josiah Wedgwood’s Etruria factory.
The paper became a morning paper in 2009, with main edition, a Cheshire edition and a Staffordshire Moorlands edition produced daily.
Read more at http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk
Notes on using a jAlbum Photograph Gallery
When you click the link above you will open a ‘jAlbum’ file which has a number of slides.
To play the slide show of documents click the right arrow key at the bottom right corner of the first picture.
Hover your mouse pointer at centre top of the document and a set of buttons will appear
- if you can’t see the caption to the photograph click on the 5th icon from the right,
- to go the next document click on the right arrow,
- to go to the previous document click on the left arrow,
- to return to the BDGHS web site click on the up arrow and then when the first slide re-
- appears click on the up arrow in the top left corner.
