Hot off the Press – New Titles this Week

Adding 220,681 pages this week brings us tantalisingly close to 90 million pages in the Archive—another milestone on our journey to 100 million pages. To reach this, we’ve welcomed three new titles and expanded fifty-three existing ones.

While we always enjoy adding new titles (and more on those in a moment), one of the most rewarding, and often intricate, tasks is adding new material to existing publications. Expanding coverage by tracking down ‘missing years’ requires careful investigation by our scanning team. Once a gap is identified, the search begins—examining records, cross-referencing collections, and determining where the missing issues might be found.

Sometimes, the reason is clear—volumes may have been bound separately, archived under slightly different names, or preserved in different formats. Other times, it takes meticulous detective work to locate and verify scattered editions across the vast collections housed at the British Library, from publishers, or from other historical repositories. Once found, these pages are carefully digitised and added to the Archive, helping to complete the story of each newspaper.

Each newly recovered year fills in another piece of the puzzle, ensuring that history is preserved.

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New titles this week

This week, we are delighted to welcome three new titles to the Archive, each offering unique insights into their communities. Spanning the late 19th century through to the early 20th century, these additions help us uncover the local histories of England’s coastal towns, rural heartlands, and growing suburban areas.

• Hastings and Bexhill Independent (1873-1895) – Covering the Sussex coastline, this newspaper offers a glimpse into the Victorian seaside towns of Hastings and Bexhill during a period of growth and tourism. These pages document everything from fishing and shipping industries to local politics and the changing character of these now-beloved resorts.
• Howdenshire Chronicle (1895-1938) – Rooted in East Yorkshire, this paper captures life in a largely rural area known for its market towns and agricultural communities. Spanning both World War I and the interwar years, these pages provide valuable insight into how a countryside region navigated times of change.
• Mitcham Advertiser (1909-1933) – Offering a window into the suburban development of South London, this title follows Mitcham’s transformation from a village into a bustling commuter town, shaped by the rise of the railways and urban expansion. In 1932, it evolved into the Mitcham & Tooting Advertiser, reflecting its widening reach into neighbouring areas as suburban London continued to grow.

Each of these titles contributes to the rich diversity of our Archive, capturing everything from Victorian coastal life to the shifting landscapes of 20th-century Britain.

Updated titles

This week, we’ve extended our coverage of fifty-three newspapers that have been part of the Archive for several years, filling gaps and deepening their historical coverage. Some notable additions include:

• Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail – One of our earliest additions, first joining the Archive in 2012, now extended with new pages from 1959 and 1968.
• Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail – First added in 2017, we’ve continued to update it, now reaching 2004.
• Pearson’s Weekly – Originally digitised in 2018, we’ve now added new material from 1914-1917, capturing key wartime years.

Many other titles were first introduced in 2017, and we have worked to expand them ever since.

You can keep up to date with all the latest additions by visiting the recently added page.  You can even look ahead to see what we’re going to add tomorrow.