About the Birchley Hall Press

In 1624 a book appeared on the market called “Foot out of the Snare”. Its author, one Gee, wrote: “There was a printing house in Lancashire suppressed about three years since, where all Brereley's works, with many Popish pamphlets, were printed.” That press, says Gillow, was undoubtedly secretly set up and supported by the Anderton family of Birchley Hall, Lancashire. “Among the Blundell of Crosby MSS,” Gillow continues, “is a list of works ascribed to Roger Anderton by his son Christopher in 1647; and it is therefore pretty clear that Roger Anderton set up the press at Birchley.”

About 19 titles published between 1650 and 1620 are associated with the Birchley Hall Press in the English Short Title Catalogue of the British Library.

For more information on Birchley Hall see Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birchley_Hall

The Birchley Hall Press was resurrected in 1951 in the same building, free of the religious persecutions of the early 1600s, but with similar aims, with the publication of “This is the Faith”. The text above is taken from the back cover of that book. A few further titles were published up to at least 1960, including “A Flame for Africa” (1953) and “Liverpool's Hidden Story” (1957).

The Birchley Hall Press is resurrected a second time, free of any religious association, to keep alive the memory of those early publishers and authors who showed immense courage and suffered great hardship to support their beliefs. It is starting with a challenge to mainstream cosmology, maybe with a bang, but obviously not a big bang.

2007