61. Pollard – Church Congress 1894
Thomas Pollard is believed to have first started business as a printer in Exeter in
1791. Details are sparse, but he was probably using letterpress to print
stationery, account books, and advertising pamphlets. In the early 1800s
William Carss Pollard is known to have continued the family’s printing trade from a factory
in 39/40 North Street, Exeter and like most printers at the start of the Victorian
era provided whatever their clients requested – from advertising posters to
timetables and letterbooks.
During the Victorian era and into the early 20th
century the business grew substantially under the leadership of William Pollard (son of William Carss) and then his son, Herbert Pollard. They outgrew the premises on North Street and in 1919 opened an
impressive new factory at Bampfylde Street. The depression of the 1930s
was very tough and during the Second World War trading virtually ceased. On the
4th of May 1942 the factory was completely destroyed in the Exeter Blitz. The company’s insurers would not fully cover the claim and after the
war the company had to be rebuilt largely from scratch and the company was
gradually rebuilt through the 1950s and 60s. When the country’s largest
manufacturers of weighbridges, Avery and Weightron, were frustrated with the quality of tickets supplied for their
machines the Pollard company created a specialised production centre to focus
on this market and are the undisputed market leader of weighbridge tickets
today.[1]
Although the cover title to the work below is Pollard’s Official History and Guide to Exeter it is clear from both the map itself and the paragraph of comments on the reverse of the map that this booklet was produced for the visit of the Church Congress which took place in October 1894.
Title: Church
Congress, 1894. KEY MAP OF THE City and County of the City of Exeter.
Size: 170 x 213 mm but with no scale.
No signature or imprint.
The plan has a type-script panel to the right (forming
the third of three folding leaves) which refers to the numbers on the plan, and
the use of certain buildings for the Congress. A simple plan of Exeter, only of
interest for the congress, with the old city wall line marked red with note to
that effect below the map; The RED line indicates the boundary of the Old
City Walls. The right panel on reverse has information for those attending
the congress on rail tickets.
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