About your Newspaper

The Uxbridge Gazette is a paid-for local weekly tabloid newspaper covering stories from the London Borough of Hillingdon. It has separate editions for Uxbridge and West Drayton, Hayes and Harlington, Ruislip and Northwood and Harefield. It has a 24-hour website at www.uxbridgegazette.co.uk made up of a newspaper companion site with local news and a series of hyperlocal sites including West Drayton, Hayes and Harlington, Ruislip and Northwood and Harefield.

Related titles

The Uxbridge Gazette also publishes the free Leader titles. The titles are part of the Trinity Mirror Southern group, which is part of The Trinity Mirror Group which publishes The Daily Mirror and The Sunday Mirror, among other titles. It is produced at the Uxbridge office, in Bakers Road, Uxbridge.

History

The Uxbridge Gazette has documented every kind of event over the years, from the opening of Brunel University to Heathrow Airport expansion, court cases and royal visits.

It began life as a Buckinghamshire paper. The Victorian County History states that the paper began in 1840 as Broadwater's Buckinghamshire Advertiser and Uxbridge Journal. But the British Library however claims that the origin of the paper is the Buckinghamshire and Adjacent Counties Advertiser, first edition November 15, 1853. The name changed twice in 1855, firstly to the Buckinghamshire Advertiser, and Middlesex, Herts, Berks, Beds, and Oxon Gazette, and then to the Buckinghamshire Advertiser, Uxbridge Journal and Middlesex Gazette.

The business was most likely started by William Broadwater in 1840 as Broadwater's Journal, but was not officially established as a newspaper until 1853.

Whatever its origins production of the paper was moved to premises in the King's Arms Yard, Uxbridge in 1860.

Entrepreneur Broadwater died in 1866 when ownership of the paper probably passed to William Avery.

In 1869 the paper was once more renamed as the Buckinghamshire Advertiser, Uxbridge and Middlesex Journal. Avery sold the newspaper to Samuel Loseby Torey in 1871. In 1890 the named changed again to the Middlesex and Buckinghamshire Advertiser.

In 1903, the publication was bought by Walter J Hutchings who had established a printing works in Uxbridge High Street in 1880.

The Advertiser's offices were at 126 High Street, Uxbridge. Under Hutchings, the newspaper supported the Liberal Party, and was in direct competition to the Conservative Party-supporting Uxbridge Gazette of John King. In 1906, Hutchings appointed Harry Tom Hamson (sub-editor at the Merthyr Express) as editor of the Advertiser, a position he was to hold until his retirement in 1946.

In 1917 Walter Hutchings died and his brothers, Howard and Leonard, sold the Advertiser to the King family. King had established a printing business in the King's Arms Yard and published the Uxbridge Gazette there from 1880. The King family continued to publish the Advertiser and discontinued the Gazette.

In 1922 the paper's name was changed to the Middlesex Advertiser and County Gazette.

In 1952, the newspaper was significantly changed when its front-page advertisements were replaced with news.

King and Hutchings was bought out in 1955 and became part of a growing publishing empire.

It was acquired by Westminster Press and, by 1968, had become the King and Hutchings division of Westminster Press, which in turn was owned by S Pearson Publishers.

A fire in 1968 consumed the Cricket Field Road works and the paper had to be printed from presses within Westminster Press in Slough, Oxford and High Wycombe. But newspapers were produced again from Cricket Field Road in 1969.

In 1976 the newspaper became and remain the Gazette. It was bought by Middlesex County Press in 1986, and the following year the Cricketfield Road building was demolished.

The final name change came in 1989, when the Uxbridge and Hillingdon Gazette became the Uxbridge and West Drayton Gazette, with editions for Ruislip and Northwood, Hayes and Harlington and Harefield.

Around 1994, the Gazette moved offices to Times House, Ruislip, and by 2004, the newspaper was under the ownership of Trintiy Mirror Plc with offices in Bakers Road, Uxbridge.

The new-look website marks the start of a new era for the paper and its readers allowing for greater interaction, more community news, events, bloggers and listings, and breaking news.

Details

Editor-in-chief Kim Chapman.

Circulation: 15,005 (2)

Publication day: Wednesday

Location: Gazette House, 2nd Floor, 28 Bakers Road, Uxbridge, UB8 1RG

Telephone: 01895 451000. Price: 65p

References

1 History taken from a piece written for the Uxbridge Gazette series by Richard Daniels, an archivist on the Heritage Builds Bridges project - www.heritagebuildsbridges.org.uk

2 ABC/VFD figure April 2008