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John Fleming, in his own words |
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| My varied career has always been connected with the published or printed world. When I left school I started working in Birkenhead Public Libraries where I met Rosemarie. Both of us embarked on a full-time course in Liverpool in order to gain professional librarianship qualifications. Whilst at college, I became particularly fascinated by printing and typography, both history and its practice, and bought a small printing press and some type. After qualifying as a chartered librarian, I went back to work in Birkenhead libraries and then moved to Sudbury in Suffolk in 1972 to manage a group of public libraries in a rural area. During this time I was also undertaking some commercial printing as a sort of part-time hobby business. In 1980 we moved to the Ludlow area and Rosemarie and I set up a printing and stationery business called The Tortoise Shell Press in rented premises at 28 Corve Street, which is near the Nags Head, opposite Tesco. Our business grew steadily and by 1990 we were in need of larger premises. The Nags Head pub was on the market (it was empty, having closed as a pub in 1989), and we decided to buy it. The front part of the ground floor (the former bar area) became our stationery shop, the printing was done further back, and the first floor was used initially for typesetting, artwork and darkroom facilities. At the time we were living in a house in Caynham. We decided to live in the old Nags Head, as well as to use it for our business, and, because much of the interior was in poor condition, we stripped the interior of the timber-framed part of the building (the front) back to the original timber frame to expose the beams, and a major refurbishment job was under way. The typesetting and artwork facilties which had been housed on the first floor moved to the back part of the ground floor (which is now accessed from the rear of the yard), and the first and second floors became our self-contained living accommodation. |
Special interests/hobbies: Typography, railways, food, real ale, travelling... I have been an active member of Ludlow Chamber of Trade (including a period as its chairman), and because of this I have been closely involved with Ludlow Marches Food and Drink Festival since it started in 1995 as the UK's first festival of its kind. The festival's success and influence grew rapidly and I was its chairman for several years and am still very much involved as a director. Believing strongly as I do about the excellence of our local food and drink producers, and about the importance of resisting the trans-national creep towards bland, industrialised globalised food products, I helped to start up the local Ludlow Marches Slow Food group in 2002, and have become involved with the Slow Food movement both nationally as a director of Slow Food UK and internationally. Still on the Slow front, I have also been involved with Ludlow's bid to become a Cittaslow, and was delighted when both Cittaslow and Slow Food UK decided that Ludlow was the most appropriate place in the UK to base their respective headquarters. |