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Humble beginnings
Following in the unique traditions of many famous printing houses, which began in humble surroundings, Nightingale Press was established in 1972, in an old Nissen hut halfway between Royston and Baldock along the A505, in a hamlet known as Slip End.
Despite the limitations of the original factory site - Nightingale Press built up, over some sixteen years, a list of well-satisfied customers with a policy of service (sometimes to ridiculous deadlines) and always with an eye to maintaining a good commercial product.
To everyone's relief - management, staff and customers - Nightingale Press moved to a purpose-built factory on the edge of Royston early in 1988.
With the advent of PostScript, the internet, PDF, JDF and so on, our darkroom may have become a 'server room' , and our tray of type, may have become a license with Mr Linotype, but the value of good, fast service has not changed.
Despite competitive forces from UK and beyond, we move forward continously sometimes by staying ahead of the competition in terms of technology and service levels. In fact a handful of our customers are still with us after 28 years.
In 1819 John Keats wrote his 'Ode to a Nightingale' one of the best loved poems of any anthology. That year a nightingale had built its nest in his Hampstead garden and Keats was said to have felt "a tranquil and continual joy" in listening to its song – singing "of summer in full-throated ease". The poem is a reflection on the immortal beauty of the nightingale's song and man's sadness at his own sorrow and mortality.