On 15 September 1507 James IV granted Walter Chepman and Andro Myllar a licence to set up a printing press in Edinburgh.
OTD 29 August 1553
John Scot completed the printing of the Catechism on 29 August 1553. It was the first book to be printed in St Andrews.
OTD 11 August 1711
Robert Freebairn was appointed Printer to the Queen for Scotland on 11 August 1711 in Edinburgh. He later printed for the ‘Pretender’s Army’ at Perth in 1715.
OTD 8 August 1857
On 8 August 1857, there was a major fire in James’s Court, off the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh’s Old Town, in which the printing works of H & J Pillans was destroyed.
Talk by Helen Williams
As part of the National Trust for Scotland’s Gladstone’s Land Lecture Series, the Trust’s Honorary Secretary, Helen S Williams will be giving a talk on August 31 on Edinburgh’s Print Workers and their Organisations. Printers had a tradition of collective organisation: the typographical societies, which later became the print unions, operated as welfare organisations for […]