New lease of life for antiques shop

Number 24 High Street has been Emporium Antiques Too for the past 12 years.

At its height, there were as many as 100 stallholders there spread over four floors.

But on March 31 it is to close.

It is planned to keep a shop of some kind on the ground floor and convert the rest of the large building into five flats, and three terraced houses.

Eddy Conway, manager for the past 10 years, said: 'It's been a very successful business for everyone concerned - us, the stallholders and the customers.'

But the building will be best remembered as the headquarters of Clothkits, the once hugely successful local mail order clothes-kit company that in its prime employed 400 staff spread over seven shops.

Number 24 alone accommodated 100 staff from 1969 and 1988.

The business eventually ran into trouble with computer and mailing problems and was forced to sell up.

Prior to Clothkits, number 24 housed a variety of occupants at various times, including a hairdresser, Carvell's furniture store, an undertaker, an upholstery shop and a wigmaker.

Said owner Finn Kennedy: 'Now this fine old building is about to start a new life .... one, I hope, that will breathe new life into a fine old building.'