Society mention in Country Life

Thanks to Robin Smeeton for passing this on: There was a piece in the January 7 2026 edition of Country Life magazine about Wynkyn de Worde, which mentions the Society.

Here’s looking at: Wynkyn de Worde

• William Caxton, the original hero of typographical technology, is commemorated with a plaque in Westminster Abbey. He set up England’s first printing press there in 1476, in an area of the precincts known as the Almonry where alms were distributed to the poor, and produced Britain’s first printed books, including The Canterbury Tales. This, however, is only half the story

• The other half concerns the man who took over when Caxton died. You’ll find his plaque on the wall of Stationers' Hall in Ave Maria Place just west of St Paul’s, now a splendid 1673 corporate and private venue. It commemorates Wynkyn de Worde, ‘The Father of Fleet Street’, who set up his press ‘by Shoe Lane circa 1500’

• Moving Caxton’s press from its original site to a house in Fleet Street, living next door and selling books in The Sun tavern, this German-born printer with the fairy-tale name established the historic heart of our newspaper industry. He was the first to use English-made paper milled in Hertford (Caxton’s paper was imported from the Low Countries) and the first to print and publish popular titles, a staggering 600 over the 43 years he was in business. Texts ranged from religion, grammar and instruction of the young to romance, household practices and animal husbandry

• Further, he set up a bookstall in St Paul’s churchyard that became the centre of London’s book trade. Such was the rising demand for print that he had to pass work on to other printers. An original hero of mass circulation, he was buried in 1535 at St Bride’s, the church of journalists close to the site of his press

• A second plaque commemorating him is found in the church itself. He is lauded by the 100 or so members of the Wynkyn de Worde Society, established in 1957 for ‘those dedicated to excellence in all forms of printing’. The society’s logo, inspired by Wynkyn’s own woodcut emblem, is, of course, a stylised sun 

lan Morton

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