Good News! Bell House Print Room & Bindery has received a major grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Walk down the old steps into the basement of Bell House and you’re met not by silence but by rhythm — the clatter of type, the sticky crackle of ink, the soft thump of paper meeting platen. It’s a sound that once echoed through towns across Britain, when printing presses were as common as corner shops. Today, though, that sound has almost vanished.
That’s why the news that the Bell House Print Room & Bindery, co-founded by me and graphic designer Tania Hurt-Newton, has received a major grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund feels so significant. The funding will allow us to expand the Bell House Print Room & Bindery and create a new home for endangered crafts such as letterpress, etching and bookbinding — collectively known as The Bell House Heritage Crafts Studios. It will also, crucially, allow us to expand our community reach.
The new funding means we can do far more than keep the lights on. We’ll be able to restore and preserve our presses, train volunteers, create new teaching spaces and host a celebratory Wayzgoose — the traditional printers’ fair. Most importantly, it means we can welcome people who might never otherwise discover this world of type and ink: children, older adults, and anyone facing barriers to creative opportunity.
I’ve seen it time and again. Someone comes in convinced they don’t have a creative bone in their body. Within minutes they’re setting their name in metal type, eyes narrowed in concentration. Then comes that first pull of the press, and suddenly their face lights up - a mixture of disbelief and delight.
“Unlocking creativity” is an overused phrase, but here it’s literal. We’ve seen retired teachers, teenagers, refugees and artists all sitting around the same table, sharing rollers, jokes and cups of tea, producing something together that none of them could have done alone.
That’s what The National Lottery Heritage Fund is really supporting — not just machines and materials, but possibility. Thanks to players everywhere, we can preserve these skills and open them up to anyone who wants to learn.
One of my favourite recent visitors was a man in his seventies who arrived “just to watch.” Half an hour later he was at the press, grinning like a schoolboy. When he pulled his first print he said quietly, “I didn’t know I could still do something new.” That, to me, says everything.
We see this new phase not as preservation but continuation. The presses downstairs aren’t museum pieces; they’re instruments waiting to be played. Thanks to this grant, their song — and the creativity they inspire — will carry on for years to come.
We would love you to come and experience it for yourself when next at BH.
Please follow our instagram feed @intheprintroom and send us a message to [email protected] if you would like to visit. Or just walk down the stairs and say 'HELLO'.....
About The National Lottery Heritage Fund
Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. That’s why as the largest funder for the UK’s heritage we are dedicated to supporting projects that connect people and communities to heritage, as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past.
Over the next 10 years, we aim to invest £3.6billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to make a decisive difference for people, places and communities.
