Baylis and Co, publishers of the Maidenhead Advertiser, has bought two newspapers from Berkshire Media Group, a subsidiary of Dunfermline Press.
The independent publisher, set up as a charitable trust in the Sixties by former Advertiser editor Louis Baylis, now owns the Windsor & Eton Express and Slough & South Bucks Express titles, in what the company said was the biggest expansion in its history.
The weekly titles, founded in 1812, went from paid-for to free, under previous owners Trinity Mirror, and have a combined circulation of around 49,000.
The Advertiser, founded in 1869, sells on average 23,450 copies a week.
Baylis and Co chairman and CEO Jeremy Spooner said: ‘The Express titles are a perfect fit for our current business. The Windsor Express serves the other half of the same Royal Borough as the Maidenhead Advertiser and the Slough Express opens up a whole new market for us in a vibrant area that includes the largest trading estate in Europe and a huge number of shops and businesses.
Baylis and Co, which has fifth-generation members of the Baylis family on its board, also publishes the Twyford Advertiser and free midweek paper Advertiser Lite, as well as a glossy wedding magazine and quarterly lifestyle magazine, Berkshire Living.
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