The Matlock Mercury

About The Matlock Mercury

The Matlock Mercury is a weekly tabloid newspaper published on Thursdays in Matlock, Derbyshire, serving the town and the surrounding Derbyshire Dales, including Darley Dale, Wirksworth and Bakewell. It began life in the late 1940s not as a newspaper at all but as an entertainments guide compiled by one woman from her own house, and it grew into the paper of record for the Dales. It is best known nationally for the campaign waged by its former editor Don Hale, whose journalism helped overturn one of Britain's most notorious miscarriages of justice, the conviction of Stephen Downing for the murder of Wendy Sewell.

Beginning as "Coming Events"

The Matlock Mercury began life in the late 1940s as Coming Events, an entertainments guide published by Ella Smith from her house on Bakewell Road in Matlock. What started as a modest listings sheet grew steadily in ambition and circulation, and in the mid-1950s it adopted the name Matlock Mercury, becoming a fully fledged local newspaper. The house on Bakewell Road remained the newspaper's home for more than half a century, until October 2000, when a new office opened on Firs Parade in the centre of the town. When the old Bakewell Road offices were sold in 2007 for £142,000, the sale was reported as the end of an era: the paper had been based there since its advent after the Second World War, and for many years it was printed on the same premises.

The flood of 1965

The paper's history was nearly washed away in 1965, when four feet of flood water invaded the Bakewell Road building, destroying much of the newspaper's early archive. The printing works, which shared the same building until 1996, were also badly damaged. The loss of the archive means that the paper's earliest years survive only in fragments, a particular blow for a title whose back numbers are the principal written record of post-war life in the Dales. The Derbyshire Record Office now holds the surviving run of the Matlock Mercury from April 1950 to the present, preserving what the flood left behind.

Ella Smith sells to John Uprichard

In the mid-1970s Ella Smith sold the Mercury to John Uprichard, a successful journalist and television news reporter. Uprichard modernised and updated the paper's facilities and printing works, dragging a small-town weekly into the modern era of newspaper production, aided by his wife Beryl Uprichard. The paper was eventually taken over by the Derbyshire Times and its owners, Johnston Press, the Edinburgh-based regional publisher whose titles later passed to National World. Under corporate ownership the Mercury became part of a North Derbyshire group of titles alongside the Derbyshire Times and the Buxton Advertiser, though it kept its own masthead and its Dales identity.

Don Hale and the Stephen Downing case

The Matlock Mercury achieved national fame under the editorship of Don Hale, who was at the helm for fifteen years. Hale took up the case of Stephen Downing, a seventeen-year-old with the reading age of an eleven-year-old who had been imprisoned in 1973 for the murder of Wendy Sewell in Bakewell. Downing served twenty-seven years in jail, protesting his innocence. A long campaign by Downing's family and by Hale in the pages of the Mercury led to the conviction being declared unsafe by the Court of Appeal in 2001, and Downing was released. Hale was voted Man of the Year by The Observer, named Journalist of the Year by What the Papers Say, and awarded an OBE for his efforts. The case was dramatised by the BBC in 2004 in In Denial of Murder, with Stephen Tompkinson playing Hale, and Hale later chronicled the seven-year campaign in his book Town Without Pity.

A paper at the heart of the Dales

The Mercury's patch is the Derbyshire Dales, one of the most beautiful districts in England, taking in Matlock itself, the spa town of Matlock Bath in the gorge below, Darley Dale, the lead-mining town of Wirksworth and the market town of Bakewell, famous for its pudding. The paper covers Derbyshire Dales District Council and the parish councils, the courts, farming and quarrying, tourism and the Peak District National Park, whose eastern edge the patch borders. Its journalism records the concerns of a rural district where the visitor economy, agriculture and small manufacturing meet: planning battles, flooding on the Derwent, the heights of Abraham cable cars and the illuminations at Matlock Bath.

Offices, closures and the NUJ campaign

The consolidation of the regional press has repeatedly threatened the Mercury's physical presence in Matlock. In 2012 Johnston Press announced plans to close five newspaper offices across Derbyshire, South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, including the Matlock Mercury's office, prompting the National Union of Journalists' Derby and Burton branch to write to the chief executive objecting to what it called an ill-thought-out plan. The union's letter invoked the paper's history, noting that Matlock had been made famous in journalism history by Don Hale's work on the Stephen Downing case, and argued that journalists could not serve their communities from bases miles away in separate local government areas. The episode illustrated how fiercely the town valued having its newspaper produced in the town.

Editors and staff

After Don Hale's departure, Amanda Hatfield took up the post of group editor of the Matlock Mercury and Buxton Advertiser, and the paper's editorship has more recently been held by Graeme Huston. The Mercury's newsroom has traditionally been small, with reporters covering a wide rural patch and relying on deep networks of contacts in the Dales' towns and villages. The paper's journalists have long prided themselves on knowing their patch street by street, from the council estates of Matlock to the remote farms of the White Peak.

Print, website and the Thursday edition

The Mercury is published as a tabloid every Thursday and maintains its online presence at matlockmercury.co.uk, where breaking Dales news appears between editions and an e-edition of the paper is available. The website carries the paper's news, sport, property and motors content alongside the picture galleries and reader contributions that have become the staple of local news sites. The paper's contact address has been listed as 4 Firs Parade, Matlock, and its news desk can be reached at news@matlockmercury.co.uk.

Don Hale's later campaigns

Don Hale's journalism did not end with the Downing case. After leaving the Mercury he continued to campaign on miscarriages of justice and to write about the criminal justice system, addressing the House of Commons Select Committee on his experiences and appearing widely in broadcast media to discuss his work. His book Town Without Pity, charting the seven-year fight to free Stephen Downing, was launched to national attention and promoted through dozens of television and radio interviews. Following Hale's departure from the paper, Amanda Hatfield took up the post of group editor of the Matlock Mercury and the Buxton Advertiser, inheriting a title whose reputation had been made on the national stage.

Matlock, county town of Derbyshire

Matlock is the administrative county town of Derbyshire, set in the gorge of the River Derwent on the south-eastern edge of the Peak District. The town grew as a Victorian spa and hydropathy centre, and its steep hillsides of stone villas, the cable cars of the Heights of Abraham and the riverside promenades of Matlock Bath give it a character unlike any other Derbyshire town. The Mercury's reporters cover a patch where the concerns of a working market town meet those of a national park gateway: tourism and traffic, quarrying and farming, and the preservation of one of England's finest landscapes.

The Mercury's place in the Dales today

From Ella Smith's entertainments guide to a campaigning newspaper that changed the course of British justice, the Matlock Mercury's journey mirrors the post-war history of the weekly press. It has survived flood, changes of ownership and the digital revolution, and it continues to appear every Thursday for the towns and villages of the Derbyshire Dales. For its readers, it remains the paper that knows the Dales best: the court reports, the council rows, the show results and the small, stubborn, indispensable record of a community's week.

Visit the official website: matlockmercury.co.uk