TODAY, The Forester has reached an historic milestone in bringing you the news of the Forest of Dean as it marks 150 years of continued publication.

The Forester today is a combination of three newspapers that were printed in the Forest of Dean during the 19th Century: The Coleford-based Dean Forest Guardian, Cinderford’s Dean Forest Mercury and The Lydney Observer – and all still appear by name as part of The Forester’s masthead today.

The Dean Forest Guardian first appeared on July 3, 1874. It was launched by Thomas Bright, who started life as an apprentice printer for Charles Cooper Hough, who had previously founded the Monmouthshire Merlin four decades earlier, but had been made bankrupt by the experience. Mr Hough had little to do with the daily operation of the new Guardian, leaving it all to Mr Bright.

The newspaper appeared with two pages of local news and two pages of national and international news which ha been printed elsewhere.

And when Thomas Bright died in 1890 from tuberculosis, his son Arthur, then aged only 22 years of age, succeeded him as editor and so the Bright dynasty with the newspaper began and it lasted for some 125 years.

At around the same time as the Dean Forest Guardian was being launched, Thomas Cole Gwilliam had already set up The Lydney Observer.  Little is known about the origins of the Lydney Observer as documentation about the newspaper is scarce – even the British Newspaper Library has contradictory information about the publication and when it began.

In January 1881 John Cooksey founded the ‘Cinderford Mercury’ as it was initially titled, and he was soon joined by Samuel Charley of Blakeney, and together they formed a partnership and changed the name of the newspaper a few weeks later to the ‘Dean Forest Mercury’.

However, when Mr Charley died in 1884, Mr Cooksey became the sole proprietor and editor of the ‘Mercury’ until his retirement in 1912 and sold the newspaper to Sir Harry Webb, the Liberal MP for the Forest of Dean.

This purchase meant that both the Lydney and Cinderford based newspapers were now owned by Sir Harry Webb who used them to boost his political career.

But when Sir Harry was defeated at the General Election in 1918, he lost interest in the two newspapers and subsequently sold his interest in his politically provocative papers to his manager Colonel Harry Grimwade.

Just over a decade later, Mr Grimwade went into partnership with Arthur Bright on July 1, 1922 and combined all three newspapers into one limited company and for the first time, they all became politically neutral.

The family dynasty continued when Harold Bright succeeded his father Arthur in running the business and when Mr Grimwade died in 1947, Vernon Jones and Cyril Hart were appointed directors.

For the first time, all shares in the newspaper company were now owned by Foresters.

In 1974 John Bright, his sister Mary Payne and Mrs Grace Bright became company directors following the death of Harold Bright.

During 1991 John Bright, the editor / proprietor, decided that the time was right for the newspapers to be amalgamated and he asked the public for their views on what its name should be to replace the Guardian, Mercury and Observer titles.

The overwhelming response was that it should be ‘The Forester’ taking the name from another 19th century publication that had been owned by Charles Taylor and printed in Coleford during the early 1860s.

The whole operation for the single edition The Forester was set up at the premises of the Dean Forest Mercury building in Cinderford’s Woodside Street.

But by the end of the 20th century the Bright family realised that a lot of investment was needed to bring the newspaper up to a modern standard to meet the needs of the 21st century, including new computer systems and printing processes, that because of the cost to the small family business, the board decided it was rime to bow out.

The Forester was subsequently sold to Northcliffe Media, then part of the Daily Mail and General Trust, in 2000 with The last edition of the newspaper being printed locally was on February 15, 2001.

Under its new ownership, The Forester’s journalists then moved to its new offices in Cinderford’s High Street.

Nine years later in 2010, Sir Ray Tindle, the proprietor of numerous weekly newspapers around the country acquired the publication.

But despite selling his interest in The Forester, John Bright was a regular visitor to the offices and could often be found in the room that stored the bound volumes of all four publications. Mr Bright died in 2019 prompting three pages of tributes in The Forester.

⚫ The Forester will be bringing out a special supplement later in the year to mark the newspaper’s 150th anniversary.