A journalist who started his decades-long career with a short stint at the Salisbury Journal during the post-war years paid a surprise visit to the staff after travelling from his home in Carlisle.

John Barker, 95, visited the Salisbury Journal’s Milford Street offices 74 years after he worked as a trainee reporter for one month at what was then known as the Salisbury and Winchester Journal, as part of the Army’s process of facilitating his transition to civilian life after his two years of National Service as a sergeant in the Royal Army Education Corps stationed at Bulford.

In 1949, the headquarters of the Journal were based on New Canal. John described the myriad of unique characters populating the newspaper’s offices.

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He said: “The Editor was a Mr Hanworth (who was a local shorthand king) and three reporters who I worked with. They were a Mr Wilson Sanders, Mr George Rockey and Mr John Grogan. 

"The reporters sat round a big table and used typewriters or thick pencils—there were no biros then—to handwrite their copy.

“Wilson Sanders had previously worked for the Salisbury Times, which no longer exists. George Rockey was a Cornishman who was famous for a silver-pointed walking stick which he found to be a useful device for starting conversations with strangers.”

The biggest story John covered during his short time at the Journal was when the five-year-old thoroughbred grey horse Colonist II, recently bought by Winston Churchill, won his debut race in Churchill colours at the Upavon Stakes at Salisbury Racecourse on Thursday, August 25, 1949.

John said: “It was not really far away from the end of the war and Churchill was a great hero at the time and everything he did was big news and the very fact that his horse was racing in Salisbury was quite a big thing.”

John popped into the Journal offices on Thursday, June 8 after travelling 300 miles from Carlisle with his son Jonathan for a short visit to Salisbury.

The Journal’s staff were pleasantly surprised as most had never met anyone who had worked at the publication as early as John.

He told stories of what the newspaper was like in 1949 and the changes he has seen in the industry that he turned into a lifelong career after his introduction to journalism at the Journal.

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John said: “I cannot have done so badly in that month on the Journal because after I left the Army and returned to my home in Keswick in Cumberland, your newspaper wrote to me offering a job. I was sorry to turn it down.

“After a year, I finally did get a reporter`s job on a newspaper near home called the Penrith Observer.”

John later worked at newspapers in Sunderland, Newcastle and Manchester before founding the Border Press Agency and the Lakescene magazine in Carlisle. He retired in 1988 after nearly 40 years in the industry.