AS the custodians of the oldest newspaper in the world, Berrow’s Worcester Journal, which began life as the Worcester Postman in 1690, we are privy to some wonderful old material.

Among the most entertaining is the series of both weekly and monthly supplements that used to be distributed with Berrow’s in the early 1900s, when newspaper production techniques did not allow for many photographs to be carried in the main body of the paper.

Look back at those days, and indeed even half a century later, and you will see the vast majority of publications, if any, did not include photographs with advertisements. If the text needed an illustration is was a line drawing.

To get around this production blind spot, Berrow’s published separate photographic supplements packed with images and captions and they came with the edition.

Printed on a harder, glossier paper than the newsprint, the supplements sometimes referred to stories in the main run of paper or were more often just stand alone images of interest.

The result was a cross between an illustrated news round-up, a society gossip column and miscellany submitted by readers.

To give a minute example – because each week carried well over 20 photographs – here are some of the contents of the supplements in the years leading up to the start of the First World War in 1914.

It’s a sobering thought that many of the young men, and some not so young, featured in these pictures were to perish just a few years later in that terrible conflict.