NEWSPAPERS
Chester's first newspaper was the Chester Weekly
Journal, begun by the printer William Cooke in 1721.
It continued until 1733 and was superseded by Cooke's
later ventures, the Industrious Bee or Weekly Entertainer
(1733–4) and the Chester Weekly Tatler (1734). No
copies of either of the last two are known. (fn. 1)
Cooke was evidently forced out of business by a rival
title first published in 1732, Adams's Weekly Courant,
which was established by another Chester printer,
Roger Adams. After the deaths of Adams in 1741 and
his widow Elizabeth in 1771 the business passed to
their daughter Dorothy and her husband William
Monk, formerly Adams's apprentice. Their son and
grandsons retained control until 1832. (fn. 2) The paper
included a short column of local news from 1758, (fn. 3)
and changed its name to the Chester Courant in 1793. (fn. 4)
John Dixon, owner from 1832, modernized the newspaper and reduced its price. Later difficulties led to its
acquisition by the Cheshire and North Wales Newspaper Co. in 1891. (fn. 5) It was published mid-week. (fn. 6) The
Courant was vigorously Tory in the later 1740s (fn. 7) and
had a Conservative editorial line throughout the 19th
century. (fn. 8) It ceased publication in 1984. (fn. 9)
The Whig Chester Chronicle was begun by the printer
John Poole in 1775 and at first struggled to survive,
changing its day of publication several times before
settling on Friday in 1776. It was rescued in 1783 by
John Fletcher (d. 1835), whose long life, business
acumen, and growing political influence in Chester
ensured its continuance. (fn. 10) It retained its Liberal affiliation after the Home Rule crisis, (fn. 11) and was still being
published weekly in 2000, having shed its political ties
in the 1950s and been acquired by Thomson Regional
Newspapers in 1965. (fn. 12)
The Courant and the Chronicle both circulated
widely throughout Cheshire and adjoining counties.
In 1781, for example, they were distributed throughout
the area as far as Denbigh, Shrewsbury, Stoke upon
Trent, Macclesfield, Manchester, Wigan, and Ormskirk. (fn. 13) The earliest efforts to maintain a third newspaper failed in the face of their entrenched position.
The Chester Herald (1810–13) did not long outlast the
death of its founder Thomas Cutter in 1812. (fn. 14) The
Whig Chester Guardian, despite influential support,
was published only from 1817 to 1823. Joseph Hemingway, who edited the Courant and the Chronicle in
turn, thought that Chester could not support a third
paper. (fn. 15) His point was proved again by the Chester
Gazette, which lasted from 1836 only to 1840. (fn. 16)
Conditions changed with the repeal of the stamp
duty in 1855. (fn. 17) The Cheshire Observer was begun in
1854 by Henry Smith and Henry Mills. It started as
politically neutral but evolved by the late 1850s into a
popular Liberal paper, changing ownership several
times. (fn. 18) After a short period when it was printed in
Birkenhead (1861–3) it moved back to Chester and
throve at the expense of the Courant. Both titles were
taken over in 1891 by the Cheshire and North Wales
Newspaper Co., a new venture whose Conservative
backers included the duke of Westminster and the
city's M.P., Robert Yerburgh. (fn. 19) The Observer was
published on Friday and Saturday and the Courant
on Wednesday, later Tuesday. (fn. 20) The group closed the
Courant, whose circulation was falling sharply, in 1984,
then passed into the ownership of the Chronicle, which
ran the Observer as a mid-week paper before closing it
in 1989 and instead starting Cheshire Tonight, an
evening paper which lasted for only 18 months in
1989–90. (fn. 21)
R. M. Thomas started the Chester Record as a
popular Liberal paper in 1857 and by 1864 was selling
1,200 copies a week in the city in vigorous competition
with the Observer. (fn. 22) The Cheshire News, begun in 1866,
was incorporated a year later into A. Mackie's Chester
Guardian, founded in 1867 and politically unaligned. It
was published as the Chester News and Guardian 1867–8, took over the Record in 1868, and appeared as the
Chester Guardian, Record, and News 1868–9, the
Chester Guardian and Record 1869–1946, and the
Chester Guardian from 1946 to its demise in 1956.
The Chester Daily Guardian appeared for 18 months in
1884–5. (fn. 23)
The Farmers' Herald, a monthly established in 1843
by W. H. Evans 'for the promotion of agricultural
improvement and practical and scientific farming' and
published in Chester, circulated among landowners
and farmers well beyond the county, latterly as a
magazine, until it closed in 1930. (fn. 24)
Several Welsh-language newspapers were published
in Chester, the earliest Y Geirgrawn (The Treasury of
Words) in 1796; the longest lasting was called successively Goleuad Gwynedd (The Illuminator of Gwynedd,
1818–19), Goleuad Cymru (The Illuminator of Wales,
1819–31), and Y Drysorfa (The Treasury, from 1847). (fn. 25)
The Chronicle group also published a free newspaper from 1970. Initially called the Chester Mail, it
closed in 1985 but was replaced successively by the
Chester Express Mail (1986–7), Chester Mail (1987–9),
and Chester Herald and Post (from 1989). Other free
papers were the Chester and District Standard (from
1986), Chester Tonight (1989–90), and the Chester
Evening Leader (from 2000). (fn. 26)