Purnell and Sons started out as a small family printers based in Somerset which merged with other printers over the next 100 years to become one the largest print groups in the UK and at one time a major publisher.
History
The Company was founded by Charles Dando Purnell in 1839 as a small family printers with small print shops in Radstock, Midsomer Norton and Paulton. With the influence of Wilfred Harvey, who was originally the firms accountant, Purnell & Sons grew from the 1920s onwards, as well as Letterpress printing also added a Lithography department in the late 1930s, this grew to a major concern that published and printed millions of colour books and magazines. In 1966 Purnell & Sons printed the popular and successful Purnell's History of the Second World Warpartwork series of magazines. In the 1960s and 1970s the company also published other partwork series including Knowledge, Discovering Art, The Masters, Man, Myth and Magic, Discovering Antiques, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, and History of the Twentieth Century. The latest issues in these series would offered for sale every week or fortnight in newsagents across the world and were sold in large numbers. With the profits made by the letterpress and lithography parts of the firm, a purpose built Gravure factory was added in the early 1960s. equipped with Cerutti presses with pre-press and printing cylinder production manufactured in house by Bristol Photo Engraving. At its peak employed 2,000 people and at one stage one of Europe's largest print plants, Purnell group of companies merged with Hazell Sun to form the British Printing Corporation in 1964. In 1981 Robert Maxwell the then owner of BPC closed the letterpress department, ink factory and much reduced the Lithography department, with the loss of 800 staff. From 1981 to final closure saw a steady decline in the once large print company and major local employer, a 5-month union dispute in the gravure plant against Robert Maxwell occurred in 1986, the web offset department was closed in 1989, and all book production stopped in 1996. Many former employees had their pensions affected by the Robert Maxwell pension scandal. The gravure plant printed many glossy Sunday colour newspaper supplements such as the Observer and the Sunday Times, catalogues such as IKEA Catalogue and Argos, holiday brochures such as Cosmos Holidays and weekly magazines such as Woman's Own, Radio Times and the original UK printer of Grazia. Purnell remained faithful to web fed Cerutti presses, either 2.2m or 2.4m paper width. The final 2.4m Cerutti press was installed in 2001, which replaced an older machine, it could produce 72 A4 pages per impression, had a run speed of 50,000iph with inline stitching. With a crew of 3 printers and 2 assistants. Other than one new press, Purnell suffered from under investment in both plant and equipment, although the staff continued to produce high quality work on ageing presses and printing cylinder production equipment, in the end the Polestar print group opted to build a brand new plant in Sheffield. With some of the staff relocating to help set of the new plant. The print works in Paulton finally closed in December 2005 with the loss of 400 jobs.
