A Winchester Bookshop & Bindery - TrustNews July 1991
By Claire Bolton who lived in Winchester for ten years before moving the Alembic Press to Oxford. She publishes books on printing history, bookbinding, decorative papers and book related topics.
Drawings by Patricia Calderhead
Wells Bookshop in College Street:
the shop front was installed a hundred years ago in 1891
when the shop started trading as P & G wells
Wells Bookshop in College Street has become a Winchester landmark for generations of College boys and for Winchester citizens alike. The shop's front has stood unchanged for the last hundred years and the bookshop had traded from the site for at least a hundred and fifty years previous to that. During its centuries of trading it has also had connections with two other Winchester 'landmarks', the Hampshire Chronicle and the Public Library. Apart from the longevity of the shop's trading record it is also unique in still having a working book bindery attached to it, perhaps being the only bookshop in the country to so have. This year marks the centenary of the shop's modernisation and beginning of its trading under the name P & G Wells. The building work was carried out in the summer of 1891 and the shop was ready for the new term that September. The exterior has not changed since, and the interior is still fitted with the same mahogany counter, desk and shelving that were there in the nineteenth century. However this is recent in terms of the shop's history for the business has roots as early as the 1720s.
Ambrose Holloway - writing master at Winchester College
There has been a bookseller and stationer trading in College Street since at least 1729 when Ambrose Holloway ran his business from there. He was the writing master at Winchester College and also supplied the boys with school books, note books, ink, pens and paper as well as dealing in antiquarian books. After his death in 1745 the business was run by Richard Holloway until 1757 when brothers Thomas and John Burdon took it over. After the first few years Thomas sold his share of the business to John and for the next forty years John built up a solid reputation as bookseller, stationer and publisher. The first records of Burdon's business are in Winchester College archives and are for binding and repair work on a book in 1757. John Burdon continued the Holloways' links with the College, indeed the fact that there was a bookshop in College Street at all, outside the city walls and away from the main trading street was probably due to the presence of the College in the first place. He supplied the boys with text books and stationery, and regularly bound books for the school, either new books into leather bindings or repairing old books. A number of the new books acquired by the College that were bound at the end of the eighteenth century still survive in their original bindings in their Fellows' Library. As a publisher Burdon was responsible for over sixty titles. The majority of these were school texts 'for the use of Winchester school', but he also published some books of local interest and some sermons. Burdon also had a strong interest in antiquarian and secondhand books and regularly issued catalogues of these for sale. John Burdon died in 1803. His sons Thomas and Charles ran the business until 1806 when it was sold to James Robbins.
Home to the Hampshire Chronicle
A corner of the Bindery showing storage of finishing tools
Robbins was a printer, chiefly remembered for his 'magnum opus' Milner's History and Antiquities of Winchester published 1799 - 1801. In 1805 he had bought the Hampshire Chronicle and on buying the bookshop the following year he moved his presses there. For the next six years the Chronicle was printed in College Street, probably in the downstairs of the building that houses the bindery today. Robbins had many other business interests and was owner of the Wykeham Arms as well as a pub and brewery in the Square. In the 1820s he went into partnership with Charles Wheeler and in 1827 the two partners were instrumental in setting up a subscription library, called the Public Library. For the first six months of its existence in 1828 the Library was operated from a room in the bookshop as the proposed new premises in the High Street (above what is now The Body Shop) had not been completed. Trade with the College continued as previously. In fact through the centuries the College has always been responsible for about a third of the shop's turnover. Robbins and Wheeler stressed the College connection further and the imprint on books they published stated boldly 'bookseller to Winchester College'. Wheeler died in 1830 and in 1842 Robbins, then aged 82, went bankrupt. He died two years later and in 1845 the bookshop was sold to London bookseller David Nutt.
The beginning of the Wells family's long involvement
Guillotine with arming press behind
David Nutt remained in London for the most part and the shop was run by his assistant Joseph Wells who had begun work as an apprentice to Robbins. This is the beginning of the Wells family's connection with the shop that they were to own for the next 120 years. In 1862 David Nutt took Joseph Wells into partnership. An inventory of both the bookshop and the bindery was taken at this time and gives a fascinating insight into the stock of a mid-Victorian bookshop and the tools and equipment of the bindery. Another document from this period is a small book showing the bookbinder's finishing tools. Many of the tools in the book still survive and are in use today. On Nutt's death Joseph Wells became the sole proprietor in 1866. Joseph started the College journal The Wykehamist that year. The bindery continued to be an important part of the business throughout its existence. Apart from the general work of binding new titles into leather bindings the workshop was also kept amply supplied with work from the College. Throughout the nineteenth and for the first half of the twentieth century the bindery made every exercise book that was used at the school. They bound all the prizes and, in the nineteenth century, they bound all the books for the newly-founded Moberly Library.
On Joseph Wells death in 1890 his sons Philip and George, who had worked with him in the shop, became joint partners in the business. They extended the shop from being one room at the front of the building back into the downstairs living quarters and modernised the front, installing the windows that are still there today. Members of the Wells family continued to run the business through the twentieth century. George died early in 1905 but Philip was joined by his children, Margaret and his elder son Philip. In 1911 the business expanded upstairs and a new staircase was built in the front shop. A small staff joined the family and remained with the shop through all their working lives. Elkins joined at the turn of the century and finally retired in the 1960s. Spicer joined in 1925 and Banning in 1926 both of them working until retirement age. Philip senior died in 1929 and his son Philip in 1942 leaving his daughter Margaret in charge on her own. Her younger brother John joined the firm after the second world war and then his daughter Monique and her husband Jan Fuchs making a fourth generation of the Wells family running the business.
Wells Bookshop Today
After Margaret's death in 1982 the building was sold to Winchester College and the business to a new partnership, under the management of Matthew Huntley, to continue trading under the name P & G Wells. The bindery is still in operation although the back garden that once separated it from the rest of the building has long since been covered over. The production of exercise books for the College has ceased but regular repair work for the College libraries is still done. Most of the work in the bindery today is restoration and repair with the occasional short run edition of new books.
Records and documents pertaining to the business are unfortunately scant. Almost all the records were housed in the cellar, which flooded regularly reducing them to a pulped mass. What few have survived are unique enough to give some insight into the nature of the business, both shop and bindery, through the centuries.
As a bookshop Wells is perhaps atypical. As was stated earlier it is not in a main commercial street but stands in a quiet backwater. Because of the presence of Winchester College, its one large customer, it has been partly sheltered from pressures of commercial change but this is to our benefit. This is not to say that the shop has stood still, for what has been preserved is not a museum piece but a modern bookshop with the latest computer technology happily housed in a Victorian setting with its bindery attached.
A full history of the bookshop and bindery is to be published as a limited edition by the Alembic Press, 139 Upper Road, Kennington, Oxford OX1 5LR on September 16, 1991 from whom a prospectus is available. A more detailed study of the binding tools, and some of the bindings in Winchester College Fellows Library on which they were used, will be published as an Occasional Paper by the Bibliographical Society in 1993.