Albert Gait’s shop, Old Market Place, Grimsby 1869.

From the Albert Gait Collection. Part photograph / part painting.

Albert Gait was a bookseller, printer, commercial and retail stationer, account book manufacturer, bookbinder, machine ruler, music seller & publisher, die sinker and lithographer, newspaper agent, wholesale paper & paper bag merchant, artists’ colourman and dealer in patent medicines.

Albert Gait’s shop at 13 Old Market Place was home to the business for 110 years. After WW1, the Gait family also took over the former artillery barracks in Victoria Street and their Castle Press printing works flourished into the 21st century. The association of the name Gait and printing disappeared from Grimsby following the closing of Wyndeham Gait, printers, in 2015. That’s 155 years since the young Albert Gait travelled from Brighton to Grimsby and bought a book selling and printing business from the Skelton family.

Note: The picture shows that Albert Gait originally occupied two adjacent premises in Old Market place. The arrangement of the buildings is somewhat different today. The bookshop on the left of the picture is now the Tivoli Tavern.