West Sussex Gazette - High Street, Arundel, UK - Blue Plaques on Waymarking.com

The British History Online website has some references to the West Sussex Gazette:

Still more picturesque are the new offices of the West Sussex Gazette built in 1899–1900 to the designs of Wheeler and Lodge of London, and then described as probably 'the most artistic newspaper office ... in England'. The elaborately detailed façade of three storeys with a gable uses glass, pebbledash, and limestone ashlar as well as brick and timber, and the south side is crowned by six attached chimneys of hexagonal plan. The printing works of 1906 at the rear, with an ornate façade on Tarrant Street, is by the same firm of architects.

Three inhabitants subscribed jointly to a London newspaper in 1778. Mitchell's Monthly Advertiser and West Sussex Market and Railway Intelligencer, of independent outlook, was founded at premises in High Street in 1853 by the printer T. H. Mitchell, with his son W. W. Mitchell, later mayor, as editor and publisher. It was soon renamed the West Sussex Advertiser, and from the following year appeared weekly as the West Sussex Advertiser and South Coast Journal, later the West Sussex Gazette and County Advertiser. Despite the smallness of the town in the 19th and 20th centuries, the paper claimed in 1903 to have the largest circulation of any provincial newspaper in southern England. In 1995 it remained one of the two chief West Sussex newspapers, but though its offices were still in Arundel it was no longer printed there, ownership having passed to Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspapers. A rival paper, The News (Littlehampton and Arundel), Local Guide, District Reporter and Visitors' Journal, was published in both towns between 1869 and 1880 or later.

A circulating library in the early 19th century also sold books and stationery wares, besides drugs, china, glass, tea, and coffee. (fn. 1795) In the 1830s there were two printers; one then also sold books, fancy stationery, and music, and later newspapers. T. Mitchell was a bookseller and stationer in 1830 and a printer by 1842. His son from 1853 published what became the West Sussex Gazette, and as a result printing could be described in 1884 as one of Arundel's two chief industries, the other being brewing. Mitchell's remained jobbing printers c. 1980, but by then the Gazette was printed outside the town. Other stationers, booksellers, and newsagents in Arundel in the later 19th century and the 20th included a Catholic bookseller, later a Catholic repository, from 1882. Other indications of middle-class culture in the mid 19th century were the presence of music teachers and a piano tuner.

The building is Grade II listed with the entry at the Historic England website telling us:

1899-1900. Architects Wheeler and Lodge of Horsham and London. Newspaper office. Ashlar ground floor. Brick 1st floor. Applied timber and pebbledash 2nd floor. Pitched tile roof. 6 hexagonal red brick chimneys linked by an elaborate cornice. 3 storeys and attics.

Groundfloor glazed with moulded wooden mullions with grotesque label stops, moulded wooden segment-arched transoms, and lead glazing bars. 2 12-panelled doors, central one with upper 6 panels glazed, both with dentilled cornices and brass art nouveau handles . Projecting ashlar cornice with strapwork cartouche, giving date of establishment (1853).

1st floor has 2 oblong bays with mullion and transom windows, casements with lead glazing bars, and a dentilled cornice.

2nd floor jettied on elaborate consoles (diamond facets, strapwork, triglyphs and mutules all featured). Close-spaced studs, with elaborate terms at either end, carrying 2 more consoles, identical to the others. 3 projecting bays, central one segmental, flanking 2 canted, and taken on consoles, all with lead glazing bars and dentilled cornices.

Attic storey jettied; embattled bressummer. Close studded, with central term, strapwork bargeboard and baluster finial.

On ground floor is remarkable late C19 office interior. Front and back walls glazed, site walls covered in glazed tiles. High desks with embattled parapets all round, and elaborate brass racks and desks for keeping ledgers.