A butcher who is hanging up his apron after more than 50 years says he is leaving the trade “on a high”.

Raymond Jeffrey Burrows, known as Jeff, and his wife Susan will be putting the closed sign on the door of their Dover Road butchers for the last time on Saturday.

R.J. Burrows has been trading for 32 years but the premises itself has been an independent butcher’s since 1882.

Mr Burrows said he left school on a Friday in 1966 and, by the Saturday, he was helping at his father’s butchers in Sturdee Avenue, Gillingham.

He later took over the running of that shop until it was decided that a new premises was needed in the mid-1980s.

The Dover Road plot was bought from James Bertram Lewis, who was retiring at 75 and the family – which included four children at the time – moved in. Just over a year later, the couple had another daughter together.

Mr Burrows, 66, said: “The footfall has gone down. When we arrived the parade of shops were all open but slowly people’s shopping habits have altered. I am getting too old for the physical side of it and it is about time we lived ourselves.

“When you are self-employed it takes a lot of your life up and it’s not just what people see, it is what’s being done behind closed doors.

“It is about time we hung up the apron strings.”

The couple intend to lock the door at 1pm on Saturday and will later decide what will happen with their shop.

Mr Burrows said they will spend more time with their five children and their grandchildren as they settle into retirement.

“This is purely our choice,” he said. “We are leaving on a high and leaving now while the going is good.”

The first butcher to occupy 129 Dover Road was William Morley, which opened on March 16, 1882.