Farewell, Fleet Street

When the CPU moved out of Fleet Street in January 2008, it ended nearly a century of residency on what was once journalism's ink-stained epicentre. Lindsay Ross takes a look back at who and what made the street great.

Now comfortably ensconced in our new modern offices at the Press Association building in Victoria, it was at the end of January 2008, that the Commonwealth Press Union bid farewell to Fleet Street after 99 years residency.

During its long residency in Fleet Street, the CPU moved quite frequently, inhabiting such memorably quaint addresses as Hen & Chickens Court, until it came to its final resting place at Number 17 in the late 1990s. It seemed entirely appropriate that we were housed in the building that was the oldest in Fleet Street to survive the Great Fire of London in 1666, as we are certainly the oldest press freedom organisation in existence and indeed, one of the oldest Commonwealth organisations across the board. But times change and it was time to move on to a new incarnation in a new home.

Fleet Street today is still used as a metonym for the national press of the United Kingdom even though the last major news organisation, Reuters, actually left in 2005 and the main nationals left decades before. Today the legendary hostelries and restaurants, once the favourite watering holes of the famous and infamous journalistic community, are the haunt of lawyers and investment bankers. What times we live in!

However, it was precisely because of those lawyers that Fleet Street emerged as the news centre of the world. Around 1500, William Caxton's apprentice, Wynkyn de Worde, set up a press in or near Shoe Lane (a side street leading north from Fleet Street) and another printer and publisher, Richard Pynson set up his business next to St. Dunstan's Church on Fleet Street itself. More printers and publishers followed as business thrived, most of them supplying the legal trade in the four Inns of Court that were long established in the area.

So it was in March 1702 that what is claimed to be the world's first daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, was published in Fleet Street, allegedly from premises above the White Hart Inn - which seems entirely appropriate considering the role that pubs subsequently played in the lives of the newspapers in the great days of Fleet Street. This first paper comprised one page with two columns and, apparently Mallet - the proprietor - advertised that he intended to publish only foreign news, adding that he would not take it upon himself to add any comments of his own, supposing other people to have "sense enough to make reflections for themselves." - a misconception that has continued to the present day.

There is some argument as to whether the Daily Courant actually was the first paper as the Norwich Post also lays claim to that title, being supposedly published in 1701. But the Daily Courant did not last and was merged with the Daily Gazetteer in 1735 - the very first of a long list of mergers and acquisitions to come in the next 300 years.

Named for the Fleet River which runs south from Hampstead, down Farringdon Road to enter the Thames at Blackfriars, Fleet Street stretched from Ludgate Circus to Temple Bar (the western boundary of the City of London) and was, for over two centuries the centre of the world in terms of news. It was the home of all the UK national papers and many provincial titles had offices there, although it was only the Daily Express and the Daily Telegraph buildings that were actually on Fleet Street itself by the end. The others were scattered around the immediate vicinity. Thankfully, the immaculate art deco façade and some interiors of the Express Building have been listed and preserved for future generations, as with the Telegraph building's Egyptian façade.

The tales of Fleet Street are many and legendary and certainly, at its height, it was an extraordinary place to work. A singular atmosphere prevailed; a buzz of urgency was in the air, a sense of awareness of being at the very epicentre of world news, of being in the know. Whether there was actually ever a "golden age" of Fleet Street is debatable, but there is no doubt that from the early part of the 20th century it has thrown up some memorable and extraordinary characters who have left an indelible imprint on the national psyche: the great but flawed press barons such as Northcliffe and Beaverbrook, legendary editors like Arthur Christiansen who edited the Daily Express for 24 years achieving circulation of over 4 million daily at its height, or the great crusaders such as Harold Evans of the Sunday Times and Hugh Cudlipp at the Daily Mirror. These and their like have become the stuff of myth and legend. In its glory days, Fleet Street raised the ordinary to the extraordinary and humbled the mighty - or those that it perceived needed humbling.

1986 was the year that saw Fleet Street's reign as the news capital of the world end - effectively overnight - when Rupert Murdoch's papers were moved lock, stock and barrel to a new site at Wapping outside the eastern boundary of the City of London. With the departure of perhaps Fleet Street's most famous title, The Times, it seemed that time had been called on an era. Over the next years, the other titles started to sell up and move and never again would 'Fleet Street' as journalism once knew it actually exist, apart from in the memories of those who had worked there.