AFTER 71 years the butcher's blade has fallen for the last time at a Hampshire business.

Frank Moody has been working in his family butcher's business in West Wellow since 1936 and has seen it grow over the years into a general store.

The 82-year-old's retirement from West Wellow Stores, in Salisbury Road, brings the curtain down on an incredible seven decades of service to his village.

Frank started working at the age of 12, when his father bought him a bike to deliver meat to local villagers.

In those days West Wellow had a population of only 300, but Frank has seen it grow to more than 3,000 in his lifetime.

He said: "I've been working here 71 years and it's a very sad day for me to give this up.

"I really enjoy the job and it's good for me because I'm always meeting people and talking to them. I have made a lot of friends and I shall miss it very much.

"In my spare time I'm going to be doing a bit of gardening and staying in the village. I'll never leave here.

"The business started off when my father bought me a bicycle when I was 12. He got me a carrier for it too, so I became the Saturday boy who delivered meat to the villages.

"When I left school, we went round in the van. We had scales in the back and served customers all round the villages."

Frank's father, Alfred Moody, began trading in West Wellow as a butcher in 1920, when he kept cattle and pigs on a small-holding at Rossmore Rover Hill.

The shop operated first in a building at the Red Rover Inn, where a tree stump was used as the butcher's block. In the 1930s it moved to the nearby A36, delivering meat to surrounding villages.

Frank was called up in 1943 and served as a gunner in the Royal Artillery in Italy. He fought in Greece and at the battle of Monte Casino.

He returned in 1946 to work in the shop, becoming master butcher in 1952 after the death of his father.

In 1972 Frank bought a shop on the A36 and turned it into the present-day grocery and butcher's. The business closed on Saturday for a month but has been bought by new owners, who plan to refurbish it and hold a grand reopening later this summer.

Jim Hatch, a mechanic in the village who has known Frank for many years, said: "Everybody around here knows him and he will be sadly missed."