A printing and publishing house for over a century

WHILE the Meath Chronicle has been printed at Market Square, Navan, for over a century, it was not the first newspaper to be produced on the premises. That distinction goes to the Irish Peasant newspaper.

In 1887, James Davis, a native of Fermoy, Co Cork, moved to Navan, and some years later bought the plant and goodwill of The Irish Peasant Printing and Publishing Company at Market Square, set up by MP James McCann on the premises in 1903, a year before his death. He established a successful printing works there, specialising in printing, bookbinding, paper bag making and wallpaper manufacture. He also established a stationery, paint and wallpaper shop at Market Square, having been in that business before he left Cork.

In 1907, he began printing the Meath Chronicle at the former Irish Peasant printworks on a contract basis for Tom Daly, who had founded the paper 20 years earlier with his brother, in Kells.

The Dalys operated from Newmarket Street in Kells, and the Chronicle appeared on Saturday mornings when first published in 1897. In those days, it was an eight page newspaper, with a circulation of 2,200 copies per week.

As well as being a founder of the paper, Tom Daly was its first editor. As an experienced reporter and editor already, and friend of the leading figures of the day, including Arthur Griffith, Daly was in a prime position to gauge the mood of the county and its people.

In 1917, following the deaths of the Daly brothers, James Davis purchased the Meath Chronicle, beginning a family association that was to last for a century.

Davis, renowned for his hard work and foresight, saw his newly-acquired newspaper develop from a local town sheet to that of the leading county organ – with an ever growing circulation in the counties surrounding Meath, quickly becoming one of the leading provincial papers in the Saorstat.

On Market Square, he built up a successful printing business, equipped with the most up-to-date machinery, and his bookbinding department at the time was one of the best of its kind in Ireland.

He competed successfully for contracts in every county, beating even Dublin city firms of standing. In those days when type was all hand set, James Davis was the first provincial newspaper proprietor to install a line of type casting machines, the forerunner of the famous Linotype.

It was a turbulent time in country at the time, in the aftermath of the Easter Rising of 1916, and in December 1918, after repeatedly calling for full independence for Ireland, the outspoken Meath Chronicle was raided by the military and the drive gears confiscated from its presses.

But James Davis was never daunted. He had the presses up and rolling the following week when the paper apologised for its failure to appear for the first time since it was founded 21 years earlier. To this day, that is the only issue that the paper has ever missed.

The Chronicle passed through generations of the Davis family, and to the fourth generation of Jim Davis as editor and John T Davis as managing director. The machinery used to typeset and print the Chronicle had seen little or no changes or improvements since the early days, nor had the lay-out or editorial content, which was by now, dated and drab looking.

The fourth generation of proprietors set about changing this and introduced photo engraving machinery, allowing the Chronicle to carry photographs for the first time ever. New typesetting machines were installed, along with new newspaper printing machines. Then, the 1980s saw the arrival of web-offset printing; the computer for typesetting; the camera for screening of photographs; and colour printing.

By the end of the 20th century, Meath Chronicle was printing over 60 titles per month on its American-made Web Leader installed in 1993, and the time had come to invest in a new printing press.

In those glory decades of print journalism, Jack Davis took the decision to invest £20 million on a new printing press, and a KBA Colora Press was installed in a new print plant facility at Mullaghboy Industrial Estate in Navan, opening in April 2002. For the next few years, both the print plants operated simultaneously, until eventually all the printing work moved to Mullaghboy, and the publishing element under editor, Ken Davis, remained in the modern office development on Timmons Hill, off Market Square. Margot Davis, wife of Jack, operated a stationery supplies shop at the Market Square retail unit until the acquisition of the company by Celtic Media Group and her retirement.

One of the legends surrounding the old printworks building is that of the apparition of Francis Ledwidge, the Slane poet who died on the World War I battlefields in July 1917. His best friend, Matty McGoona, worked in the printworks, and when locking up one evening saw his friend Frank at the gate.

By the time he got to the gate, Frank was gone. He was puzzled. What had happened? Was Frank home? Nobody knew. Next morning came the news of Ledwidge's death in Belgium.