Our story begins in 1881, when the Empress Eugénie established St. Michael’s Abbey, Farnborough, as a mausoleum to her son who’d just been speared through the eye in the Zulu War. Ow.
All right, so it actually begins decades later, when Father Anscar Neilson started St. Michael’s Abbey Bookbindery in an old terrapin hut with an outside toilet. In 1971, a new bookbindery was constructed (with an inside toilet and, goodness, even heating) and customers started to visit and deal directly with the binders.
At first the monks carried out the binding assisted by one or two secular craftsmen, but eventually the monks stepped back, leaving the workshop staffed entirely by secular binders.
Among them was Paul Berry, one of the Abbey’s choir singers. He did a few jobs for the monks and befriended two of the craftsmen, Tony Havard and Lee Prior, before officially joining in 1973 and starting his five-year apprenticeship aged sixteen.
Tony Havard, whose mission in life was largely to wind up Paul, was head bookbinder until the early 1980s, when he was succeeded by Lee. In 1983 they were joined by another Tony – Tony Farthing. When Lee himself moved on in 1994, Paul and Tony were left to hold the fort.
All change in 1995
In 1995, the monks decided that they and the Abbey would retreat from public life, no longer wanting contact with anyone outside their small community. The choir was evicted and weddings, christenings, and public Sunday Masses were all stopped. And St. Michael’s Abbey Bookbindery was closed down. Sadly, this previously welcoming, friendly, and communal place was no longer.
But Paul and Tony’s story didn’t end there. They negotiated to buy the business with their redundancy pay and decided to carry on somewhere new.
Becoming the ‘Abbey Bookbindery’
Since they couldn’t keep the name ‘St. Michael’s Abbey Bookbindery’, Paul and Tony named their new business simply the ‘Abbey Bookbindery’ to pay homage to their origins.
They moved to a barely converted old pig shed on an industrial estate called Frimhurst Farm in Deepcut, close to Frimley Green. It became vacant after its previous tenant, who had ties to the Kray Twins, went missing. Suppliers he hadn’t paid even came looking for him at the bindery in the months following his disappearance. Because there’s nothing like a bit of gangster drama to kick off Paul and Tony’s new journey.
After doing up the building and installing some lovely new branded doors, the Deepcut bindery remained their humble abode for the next 23 years.
A somewhat too humble abode
Sometimes the Deepcut bindery felt like it was held together with duct tape and hope. They were back to having an outside toilet, which countless spiders called home, and no heating. The terrible tin roof would leak in the winter.
Luckily, the owners were wonderful and fixed everything immediately. Ha, just joking.
In 2003, Tony Farthing upped sticks and moved to America, handing over the reins of the business to Paul. Over the next few years Paul hired employees to help with the load, particularly the steady influx of work from major music and art house publisher Genesis Publications.
By the end of the 2010s, the Abbey Bookbindery was down to one: Paul. Well, Paul and Grant Newman, a cabinet builder from next door who was in the bindery so often that customers assumed he worked there (and was so fresh-faced next to Paul, figured he must be Paul’s son).
Meanwhile, the owners of Frimhurst Farm were so exhausted by the outrageous burden of being responsible for things that they sold the land to developers. Which was just as well, since the bindery building was one puff of wind away from collapsing on its own.
Bringing home the bindery
In 2019, Paul decided to relocate a bit closer to home: his actual home. With the help of Grant Newman, an expert at packing lots of equipment into tiny spaces, Paul converted his fourth bedroom into a new workshop. It meant replacing the business’s 80-year-old guillotine, which none of Paul’s employees had been allowed to use because it didn’t meet health and safety standards!
Paul relocated at just the right time; only two months later, the Covid-19 pandemic hit and the UK was plunged into lockdown. But Paul – and the Abbey Bookbindery – weathered the storm, just like they had done all the others.
Paul continues to work for private customers alongside major publishers and institutions, including Glyndebourne Music Library, Spectator Magazine, and one of his longest-standing clients, the Athenaeum private members’ club in London. He has no plans to move the bindery again, because now he has his wife Sandy right there to bring him coffee.*
* Sandy would like everyone to know that in fact she does a lot more than bring Paul coffee. Lately she’s been stripping and sewing books and assisting with some very complicated repairs!
The Abbey Bookbindery 