A corner shop in central London has recently been turned into an exhibition space, and is currently exploring the history of 19th-century printers who worked in the area.
Printing on the Strand in the 18th century was a major hub of London’s popular print culture, characterised by vibrant publishing activity that wasn’t constrained by rules affecting printers within the City of London.
Key sites included Bear Yard, near present-day King’s College London, which hosted significant printing and publishing operations, and a King’s College exhibition, which is free to view through the shop windows, tells their story.
The printers moved away when the area was redeveloped, hence the exhibition title, the Lost Landscapes of Print, which is a mix of objects and stories from the printers’ trade.
Although Fleet Street is synonymous with the newspapers, two of the most popular newspapers of the 19th century were printed on the Strand, not Fleet Street. They were the Illustrated London News and rival The Graphic, both trading on their revolutionary ability to print pictures in their pages.
The largest item in the display is a replica of a printing press room, with an 1862 iron-top printing press surrounded by old print blocks, typefaces waiting to be laid out into pages.
The printing press and collection of historical print paraphernalia are now part of the Bear Yard Press, a research and teaching hub for Print and Book History at King’s College.
Around the corner, a window filled with older printing methods, such as early woodblocks, metal engravings and loads of examples of the sorts of books and newspapers printed in the area.
The exhibition, Lost Landscapes of Print, will be on display on the corner of Strand and Surrey Street until October 2026. It’s open all the time, as you just look through the shop windows.
It’s not the biggest display, but a delight to spend a few minutes peering through the windows if you’re in the area. There is also a self-guided tour of key locations in the local streets, which you can scan a QR code on the display or just click here.
