The Coventry Herald, Coventry Herald and Observer or the Coventry Herald and Free Press was a newspaper that was established in 1808 by Alderman Nathaniel Merridew, a ribbon warehouseman and Congregationalist, in Coventry, England, and ran in print until 1940.[1][2][3]
Merridew's Whig and Dissenting views were initially represented by the newspaper and it was the recognized publication of the Liberal party in Coventry.[2]The newspaper's control was given to Alderman Nathanial's third son Henry upon his death.[4] Originally just the Coventry Herald,[4] a political disagreement in 1828 with the Liberal party led to a competing newspaper, the Coventry Observer to be formed in 1828.[1]
These papers were later merged into a single paper under Henry in 1830.[1] Henry's business failed and he sold to John Turner (1842), and later opened a boarding hotel in Boulogne-sur-Mer.[4] Successive owners include Charles Bray (1846)[1][2] While owned by Bray, the newspaper published some of the earliest prose writing of George Eliot.[5]
The newspaper changed names again in 1863, after merging with the Free Press and Midland Express in 1863.[6] During the 1860s, it was owned by Matthew Vincent, who claimed that he turned down an offer of £30,000 from Joseph Chamberlain to purchase it, because Chamberlain would have changed the political alignment of the newspaper.[7] In 1914 they absorbed the Coventry Times.[2] The paper stopped publication in 1940.[2]
Historical copies of the Coventry Herald, dating back to 1824, are available to search and view in digitised form at The British Newspaper Archive.[8]
The Coventry Observer is local weekly newspaper published by Bullivant Media.[9]
Coventry Herald.
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