The story of how the Border Counties Advertizer rose

The newspaper was founded by Samuel Roberts and his sons, William Withridge and John Askew, were influential in its development with the latter having the distinction of being editor with its first printing office at the Bailey Head.

The newspaper was not the first to be published in the town with that particular honour belonging to the short-lived Oswestry Herald which was first published as far back as 1820 by renowned local historian William Cathrall.

At the time of the birth of the Tizer only the Shrewsbury Chronicle, founded in 1772, served the readership of all of Salop.

An old advertisement in the Advertizer.

Newspapers had been hamstrung by the Stamp Act which taxed proprietors for printing news and as such the Oswestry publication had looked to the arrival of the railway to the town to build its readership.

The newspaper was first established as the free monthly Oswestry Advertiser and Railway Guide and would not adopt its now famous name and adopt the Americanized spelling of Advertizer for several decades.

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The first editor, John Askew Roberts, described the newspaper as ‘necessarily imperfect’ though planned to have a ‘complete compendium of local information’ in forthcoming editions.

Mr Roberts underlined the importance of advertisements and local businesses supporting the newspaper to devote space in the newspaper for literature and politics, writing ‘It is quite impossible to give a quantity of paper and printing away, unless the return from the advertising department compensates for that loss.’

The same principle largely applies today.

When Red Rum visited Oswestry Show in 1978.

By the end of 1849 circulation had increased to 1,000 and copies were read by the gentry of surrounding villages while also becoming a champion of traders and shopkeepers by supporting the new winter closing time of 7pm which had been considerably earlier than previously.

The introduction of a subscription was successful and readership increased beyond Oswestry and by 1853 it had increased in size again and was now a four page broadsheet newspaper.

The passing of the Newspaper Stamp Duty Act led to the Oswestry Advertiser becoming a weekly newspaper from September 12th 1855 and the following year represented another year of expansion.

A report in the Advertiser form the Second World War.

The Oswestry Advertiser, Montgomeryshire Mercury and Local Journal for the Borders of Wales was launched on January 7th 1857 with a new printing machine capable of printing 1,000 sheets an hour.

The newly purchased Caxton Press would lend its name to the newspaper’s new printing works on Beatrice Street.

The newspaper’s circulation was expected to increase with a growing readership in Montgomeryshire which had no newspaper of its own and sold to those who would travel to Oswestry via the railway.

On March 2, 1864 the Oswestry Advertiser reported a circulation of 3,500 with its latest edition the first ever produced by steam power in the town.

The Oswestry Advertiser would become the Oswestry Advertizer on July 7th, 1869 though there is no record of the reason behind the sudden change in spelling after 21 years in publication.