The first issue of the Wells Journal appeared on 2nd August 1851. It comprised 8 pages, cost 5d and was published by bookseller and printer Samuel Backhouse. The paper pledged to advocate the public good and to defend the principles of universal morality, excluding all “objectionable advertisements”. It had a duty to “investigate without prejudice the necessities and objects which crowd the grand field and appear upon the horizon of our political life”. It promised that commercial, agricultural, foreign, colonial and literary intelligence would be carefully represented. This would sit alongside Army, navy, police and court news, music, drama and local and district intelligence.

Backhouse ran the business for almost 20 years and after a brief ownership by George Bishop, the paper passed to James Motes Atkins. Atkins was from Leicester where he had worked as a sub-editor. He owned and edited the Wells Journal for over 40 years.