Curved, hot metal, stereotype printing plate, used to print the front page of the Daily Telegraph, 31st December 1985, the last ever Daily Telegraph printed at Thompson House in Manchester.

This printing plate represents the end of an era for newspaper printing in Manchester’s city centre.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper printed the last stereotype printed edition using this curved, hot metal printing plate. After this edition, they closed their city centre premises and moved production to Trafford Park where they started using the newer process of web offset printing.

Stereotype printing has been in use since the early 1700’s. Curved printing plates were adopted from the 1860’s. A page of text and images is meticulously laid out and then cast as a curved metal printing plate then placed on rollers. When ink is applied, the rollers are rotated printed the text and images onto the paper.

By the 1980s, web offset printing had become more efficient and had greater clarity. The process is especially suitable for high volume publications like newspapers and can make use of coloured ink.

The Daily Telegraph, a daily broadsheet newspaper established in 1855, was printed in Manchester’s city centre location between 1940 and 1985. The Withy Grove building was once Europe’s largest printing centres, printing as many as 10 national publications employing 4,000 print-workers and printing 10 million newspapers a week.

The building has been known by various names since Edward Hulton established his printing business on the site in 1873. It was redeveloped in 2000 as The Printworks, an entertainment and leisure venue, retaining originals features such as the internal train tracks and external Portland stone façade.