One of the Warehouses
Of the Bible Side the ground floor is now the press room or Machine Room, which, with its more recent extensions, holds about fifty machines, from the last survivor of the old flat-impression double Platens to the most modern American double-cylinder ‘perfecting’ presses with their automatic ‘feeders’. All kinds of printing are done here, from the small numbers of an oriental book or a Prayer Book in black and red to the largest impression of a Bible printed in sheets containing 320 pages each. The long experience of printing Bibles on thin paper and especially on Oxford India paper has given the Oxford machine-minder an unrivalled dexterity in the nice adjustment required to produce a fine clean effect on paper which will not stand a heavy impression.
As the sheets come from machine they are sent to the Bindery. This was until recently on the floor above the machine room, but has lately been transferred to a larger and more convenient building erected in the old garden behind the Press. The Oxford Bindery deals with most of the Clarendon Press books in cloth bindings, and prides itself upon the fine finish of the cases and gilding of such beautiful books as the Oxford Book of English Verse, as well as on being able to turn out artistic and attractive cloth and paper bindings for books sold at the lowest prices. It still deals with a part only of the books printed under the same roof; but a large expansion is looked for in the near future.
Between the two wings, and across the quadrangle, are two houses once occupied by the late Horace Hart and by Dr. Henry Bradley, now the senior of the three editors of the Oxford Dictionary. The houses became some years ago unfit for habitation from the encroachment of machinery; but one of them was a welcome refuge during the years of war to the staff of the Oxford Local Examinations, who on the 5th of August 1914 were turned out of their office at an hour’s notice to make room for a Base Hospital.
Adjacent to the houses are the fire-proof Plate Room, where some 750 tons of metal are stored, the Stereotype and Electrotype Foundry, and the Monotype Rooms, a department which has lately added to its equipment and bids fair to pass the ancient composing rooms in output. Other departments in and about the old building are the Photographic Room, famous for its collotype printing, the Type Foundry, where Fell type is still cast from the old matrices, and the Ink Factory.
The front of the building on Walton Street consists chiefly of packing rooms, where books are dispatched by rail or road to the City of London and elsewhere, and of offices—those of the Printer to the University on the ground floor and those of the Secretary to the Delegates above. Here are reference libraries of books printed or published by the Press, and records ranging from the oldest Delegates’ minute-book of the seventeenth century to modern type-written correspondence arranged on the ‘vertical’ system of filing.
As the visitor enters the main gate the first object which catches his eye is a plain stone monument on the lawn. There are inscribed the names of the forty-four men of the Oxford Press who gave their lives in the War. Beyond the memorial is the quadrangle, made beautiful by grass and old trees; and from upper windows it is still possible to look over the flats of the Thames Valley and see the sun set behind Wytham Woods.