A world-famous book binding company – founded three years before Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 – has quit Oxford city centre as it battles problems including spiralling rents.

Maltby’s the Bookbinders has left its home in St Michael’s Street, where for 125 years craftsman have been binding books by hand in the same way they would have done 300 years ago.

The company has moved to the Horspath Trading Centre, in Pony Road, Cowley, where its sister company Green Street Binding operates.

Company chairman Tony Tanner said: “It is sad to leave St Michael’s Street after so many years. The decision came down to the rent going up and the transport problems that everyone knows about in the city centre.

“We also find that we are now getting much more of our business on the website, rather than people actually calling into the shop.”

Maltby’s moved to St Michael’s in the late 1870s, at a time when there were nine different binderies in Oxford.

Few businesses in the city centre more dramatically evoked the feeling of stepping back in time than Maltby’s, known to generations of Oxford scholars for its thesis and dissertation binding services.

The firm’s first workshop had been based in St Helen’s Passage, New College Lane, before moving to the Clarendon Hotel Yard, Cornmarket in 1883.

Six years ago the company was taken over by the East Oxford company Kemp Hall Bindery.

He said the company would continue to specialise in restoring old books, with all ten members of staff and the old equipment having been moved out to the new factory in Cowley.

In recent years the company has enjoyed a small part in the annual Oscar ceremony in Hollywood, securing the job of binding the specially produced Oscar night books handed to actors, directors and guests.

The craftsmen at Maltby’s specialise in sewing books by hand with materials like goatskin and calfskin sometimes used in the binding process.

Down the years there have also been requests to bind books in snake skin and even once to bind a book on Highwaymen and Cut-throats with human flesh.

Maltby’s is not the only firm to feel the pinch from rising Oxford City Council rents.

Covered Market traders had two days of talks with councillors earlier this year.

Traders are urging the council to invest more in the historic market after a rents ruling left many facing big increases. Many feel they could be forced out as a result.

Graham Jones, a spokesman for city traders’ goup Rescue Oxford, said: “It’s a shame to see a business selling niche products leaving the city centre because of increasing rents.

“Book-binding has a long association with Oxford and it is this kind of shop that gives the city centre its character.

“From a financial point view, and from the point of view of access, it might make more sense for the firm to move to the edge of the city.”