Hi, my name is Derek Bywater and I was apprenticed at Knapp Drewetts in 1950 as a compositor. I worked there for 28 years.

It was during my time at Knapps I met my wife Pamela Bywater (nee Winford) who worked in the reading room as a copy holder. We both, at sometime in our working time at Knapps, worked on the Surrey Comet.

The firm itself was divided into two main working areas, there was the main composing room and the Surrey Comet end of the comp room.

I do remember that on press days the main room suffered badly because the Comet came first on that day, so all the periodicals that we had just went on the back burner until the paper was finished.

Also I think I'm right in thinking that during a strike in the early 50s the apprentices (and there was a lot of us) managed to hand set a small tabloid version of the paper for publication.

My wife had just drawn my attention to the fact that in the early days our tea was made in a tea urn downstairs in  the machine room and was stirred with a long length on 4em furniture, then it was the job of the junior apprentice to fill up a jug and take the tea round to the journeymen.

One particular day we couldn't get enough tea out of the urn and on digging around with the piece of em we found the cleaning rag inside, funny isn't it we all seemed to survive in them days.

Here are some of the characters of old Knapps there catch phrase sayings are in pars. Roy (hello friend) King, Harry (good night gents)  Sommers, they worked in  the lino department. Now the composing room Frank (thats the hammer) Gosling,  Jimmy (bullshit  baffles brains) Jamieson, Peter Stamford, Roy Penn, Wally  Thair, Ernie Cander and his son Sos Cander, Eric Beresford, George and his son Ron Sayers. I must stop but before I do I must mention Arthur Ball the overseer and his successor Geoff Thomas all these men were fine tradesmen in their own rights.

It was great to be a part of a great local  newspaper and if when you went on to Fleet Street for a job and you were apprenticed at Knapps the job was yours.

I hope you will get in touch with me for the reunion.

Yours Sincerely Derek Bywater
derekbywater@aol.com