North Devon Gazette

It was founded on New Year’s Day 1856 as the North Devon and East Cornwall Gazette and Commercial Advertiser, but changed title after barely five months to The Bideford Weekly Gazette and Devon and Cornwall Advertiser. In 1909 it added the words and North Devon after Bideford.

In 1919 it absorbed The Western Express and Torrington Chronicle, which had been founded in 1876 as The Western Express and incorporated the Torrington Gazette & Weekly News (established in 1849) in 1911. A few weeks later it dropped the words The and Weekly from its title.

It adopted its present title in 1986. In 1989 it added editions for Barnstaple and Ilfracombe to the existing Bideford edition; all three were renamed the North Devon Gazette & Advertiser in 1995, and joined briefly by a South Molton edition in 2004. However, the following year the four editions were reunified as a single newspaper and resumed the North Devon Gazette title.

It’s published by Archant South West, part of the Archant Lifestyle division of the Archant media group. The editorial offices are in Barnstaple.

It claims to be North Devon’s highest-circulation newspaper. Although it’s a freesheet, a small number of copies (about 3⅓ per cent) are sold through the news trade.

It comes out on Wednesdays. An e-edition of the Gazette is also available free on the website.