The Wiltshire town of Marlborough is today left without a newspaper office for the first time in more than 200 years
Owners Newquest decided to close the Wiltshire Gazette & Herald’s base in the town after transferring advertising and circulation staff to Swindon, Devizes and Trowbridge.
The only remaining reporter based at its two-storey office on Kingsbury Street was veteran reporter Nigel Kerton, who has been based there for the last 43 years.
The Gazette insisted it will ‘remain as strong as ever’in the town when Kerton begins working from his home in St Margarets Mead and holding surgeries in local coffee shops.
Readers can also leave letters at an estate agents near the Gazette’s office.
‘Of course I am sad to be leaving it after all these years but with modern technology I can work from anywhere,’said Kerton on the Gazette’s website.
‘All good things come to an end and while this is the end of the road for a permanent office in the town, the Gazette will still continue to provide the best traditional news service with the emphasis on community news and stories about what local people get up to.’
No 42 Kingsbury Street has been the Gazette’s office since the 1920s and the building, which is believed to date back to at least the 14th century, was originally the town’s corn exchange.
The Gazette was founded in 1816 as the Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette and was renamed the Wiltshire Gazette & Herald 1956.
It publishes three editions in Chippenham, Devizes and Marlborough.
The paper is part of of Newsquest‘s stable of Wilthsire titles which includes the Wiltshire Times and Swindon Advertiser.
The Times and the Gazette will now both be run from the Times’ office in Trowbridge.
According to its latest ABC figures the paper had an average weekly circulation of in the first half of this year of 23,510, which was 6.8 per cent down on the same period last year.
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